THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 


PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 


CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION 


NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH 


convenes 


MEETING 50 


ADVISORY BOARD ON 


RADIATION AND WORKER HEALTH 


VOL. II 


DAY TWO 


The verbatim transcript of the 50th 


Meeting of the Advisory Board on Radiation and 


Worker Health held at the Holiday Inn Select, 


Naperville, Illinois, on Oct. 4, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN AND ASSOCIATES 

NATIONALLY CERTIFIED COURT REPORTERS 

404/733-6070 
 

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C O N T E N T S 

Oct. 4, 2007 

WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DESIGNATED FEDERAL OFFICIAL 

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HANFORD SEC PETITION 

DR. SAM GLOVER, NIOSH 

PETITIONERS 

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BLIND REVIEW CASES WORKGROUP 55 

SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORY-LIVERMORE SEC PETITION 

DR. SAM GLOVER, NIOSH 

PETITIONERS 

66 

Y-12 SEC PETITION 

MR. LAVON RUTHERFORD, NIOSH 

PETITIONERS 

134 

PLANS TO PROCURE BOARD CONTRACTOR 

FOR FY09 AND BEYOND 

DR. LEWIS WADE, DFO 

MS. FLORENCE BLACK, CDC 

159 

SEC PETITION STATUS UPDATES: 

BLOCKSON CHEMICAL 

FERNALD 

CHAPMAN VALVE 

DOW CHEMICAL 

BETHLEHEM STEEL 

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207 

242 

273 

PUBLIC COMMENT 278 

COURT REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 317 
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TRANSCRIPT LEGEND
 

The following transcript contains quoted material. Such 


material is reproduced as read or spoken. 


In the following transcript: a dash (--) indicates 


an unintentional or purposeful interruption of a 


sentence. An ellipsis (. . .) indicates halting speech 


or an unfinished sentence in dialogue or omission(s) of 


word(s) when reading written material. 


-- (sic) denotes an incorrect usage or pronunciation 


of a word which is transcribed in its original form as 


reported. 


-- (phonetically) indicates a phonetic spelling of 


the word if no confirmation of the correct spelling is 


available. 


-- "uh-huh" represents an affirmative response, and 


"uh-uh" represents a negative response. 


-- "*" denotes a spelling based on phonetics, 


without reference available. 


-- (inaudible)/ (unintelligible) signifies speaker 


failure, usually failure to use a microphone. 

 

 

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P A R T I C I P A N T S 


(By Group, in Alphabetical Order) 


BOARD MEMBERS
 

CHAIR
 

ZIEMER, Paul L., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


School of Health Sciences 


Purdue University 


Lafayette, Indiana 


EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
 

WADE, Lewis, Ph.D. 


Senior Science Advisor 


National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health 


Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 


Washington, DC 


MEMBERSHIP
 

BEACH, Josie 


Nuclear Chemical Operator 


Hanford Reservation 


Richland, Washington 


CLAWSON, Bradley 


Senior Operator, Nuclear Fuel Handling 


Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory 


GIBSON, Michael H. 


President 


Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical, and Energy Union 


Local 5-4200 


Miamisburg, Ohio 


GRIFFON, Mark A. 


President 


Creative Pollution Solutions, Inc. 


Salem, New Hampshire 

 

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LOCKEY, James, M.D. 


Professor, Department of Environmental Health 


College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati 


MELIUS, James Malcom, M.D., Ph.D. 


Director 


New York State Laborers' Health and Safety Trust Fund 


Albany, New York 


MUNN, Wanda I. 


Senior Nuclear Engineer (Retired) 


Richland, Washington 


POSTON, John W., Sr., B.S., M.S., Ph.D. 


Professor, Texas A&M University 


College Station, Texas 


PRESLEY, Robert W. 


Special Projects Engineer 


BWXT Y12 National Security Complex 


Clinton, Tennessee 


ROESSLER, Genevieve S., Ph.D. 


Professor Emeritus 


University of Florida 


Elysian, Minnesota 


SCHOFIELD, Phillip 


Los Alamos Project on Worker Safety 


Los Alamos, New Mexico 

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SIGNED-IN AUDIENCE PARTICIPANTS
 

ALLEN, BRANDON 


AMENO, NEDRA K., C.A.S.E 


AMENO, PATRICIA, CO-PETITIONER 


ANIGSTEIN, ROBERT, SC&A 


ANTOFF, KEITH, DOW 


ANTOFF, KEVIN, DOW 


ANTOFF, MARY, DOW 


BALDRIDGE, SANDRA, FERNALD 


BARBER, PHYLLIS J., BLOCKSON 


BARTELS, PHYLLIS, NIOSH 


BERRY, TERRI, ROCKY FLATS 


BREYER, LAURIE, NIOSH 


BROCK, DENISE, NIOSH 


BRUBAKER, BETTYE & JOHN, CLAIMANT 


BUCKHAUSE, JANETTE, NIOSH 


BURKHART, HARRY, BLOCKSON 


CAMPUS, ELEANOR J., BLOCKSON 


CANO, REGINA, DOE 


CHANG, C, NIOSH 


CHARLEY, MARY B., BLOCKSON 


D’ATRI, A.R., RETIRED 


DETMERS, DEB, CONG. SHIMKUS 


DUGKO, JOHN, BETATRON OPERATOR 


DWYER, LUKE, NIOSH 


FITZGERALD, JOSEPH, SC&A 


FREW, SUSAN 


FURLAN, BOB & SUE, BLOCKSON 


GATES, JOHN, RETIRED 


GATES, MARY LOU, BLOCKSON 


GISKERIE, CAROL, BLOCKSON 


GLOVER, SAM, NIOSH 


GRSKOVIC, CATHERINE, BLOCKSON 


GURA, CYRIL, BLOCKSON 


HALEY, TOM, NUMEC 


HARRAP, JOAN, ATTORNEY 


HINNEFELD, STUART, NIOSH 


HOMOKI-TITUS, LIZ, HHS 


HOPPE, BILL, DOW 


HOWELL, EMILY, HHS 


JAEGER, ZELDA, NIOSH 


JANKOSKI, GERALYNN, BLOCKSON 

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JOHNSON, KAREN, WELDON SPRINGS 


KECA, PHYLLIS J. 


KOLLER, HARRIET 


KOTSCH, JEFF, DOL 


KURTZ, VIRGINIA A., BLOCKSON 


LEWIS, MARK, ATL 


MAHALIK, ROBERT, RETIRED 


MAKHIJANI, ARJUN, SC&A 


MANLEY, JAMES E., RETIRED 


MARCOSKI, BEV, BLOCKSON 


MARTIN, ELGAR 


MARTIN, GERTRUDE 


MAURO, JOHN, SC&A 


MCBIRCH, JAMES, NIOSH 


MCKEEL, DAN, SINEW 


NOAK, JOHN, U.S. REP. BIGGERT 


OZBOLT, YANES, NIOSH 


PARLER, RICH, NUMEC 


PETROVIC, ANTOINETTE, BLOCKSON 


PRESLEY, LOUISE S. 


RAMSPOTT, JOHN 


RECH, DON, NIOSH 


RIVERA, NANCY, BLOCKSON 


RUTHERFORD, LAVON, NIOSH 


SCHAEFFER, D. MICHAEL, SAIC 


SCHNEIDER, MARILYN, WELDON SPRINGS 


SIEBERT, SCOTT R., MJW CORP 


SIMMONS, HOMER F., DOW 


THOMAS, IRENE, BLOCKSON 


WESTAN, RICHARD, CDC 


WITKOWSKI, JOHN A., BLOCKSON 


WORTHINGTON, PAT, DOE 


WRINGLE, HAROLD, BLOCKSON 

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P R O C E E D I N G S
 

(9:40 a.m.) 


WELCOME AND OPENING COMMENTS
 

DR. PAUL ZIEMER, CHAIR
 

DR. ZIEMER: Well, good morning. I'll officially 


declare the meeting to be back in session, 


remind you again to register your attendance. 


We like you to do that each day. Even if you 


registered yesterday, do so again today so we 


have a record of who was in attendance at the 


meeting. 


Again I'd like to remind everyone that there 


are copies of the agenda and other documents 


relating to the agenda on the table in the back 


of this room. 


The record will show that all of the Board 


members are here today in attendance. We have 


a full quorum. 


Dr. Wade, do you have any opening remarks 


before we get to the agenda? 


 DR. WADE: No, only to say to those in the 


audience, all of the papers that I've given out 


this morning are on the table in the back as 


well and for your consideration. 

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HANFORD SEC PETITION


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. We're going 


to now go to the first agenda item for this 


morning, which is the Hanford site -- or the 


Hanford SEC petition and the review by NIOSH. 


Also I -- before we get underway with the 


presentation, I want to double-check -- 


although it's early in Hanford -- in Richland, 


I want to see if Ms. Hoyt or Ms. Carrico are on 


the line. They are representing the 


petitioners and we'll hear from them after this 


presentation, but let's see if either of them, 


or both, are on the line. 


(Pause) 


Yes, they are. Thank you. Then we will 


proceed. Dr. Sam Glover -- is Sam going -- no 


-- yes, Sam is going to make the presentation 


on the Hanford SEC petition evaluation report. 


Sam, welcome. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: Oh, yes, I'm sorry, we do have 


conflicts. We have two members conflicted; Ms. 


Munn and Ms. Beach will need to leave the 


table. 

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 (Pause) 


You can take your time, Wanda, and get your... 


 MS. MUNN: That's okay, I can watch Sam from 


(unintelligible). 


(Pause) 


 DR. GLOVER: (Off microphone) All right, can 


you hear me now? 


 I'm Sam Glover (unintelligible) the second -- 


you can't? 


(Pause) 


Better? 


 DR. ZIEMER: There you go. 


DR. GLOVER: There we go. Got to get trained 


on all these new pieces of equipment. So I'm 


Sam Glover. I'm here to present the second 


part of the Hanford Special Exposure Cohort 


petition evaluation 57. Back in July we were 


at Hanford and presented the first part of 


this. This will cover the period from -- the 


first part covered for the period from 1943 to 


September 1st, 1946. This will continue from 


September 1st, '46 through 1990. 


 Very briefly, this was presented previously at 


the -- but we're going to talk -- there were 


three petitions that were submitted; Petition 

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50, which covered the earliest period, from '44 


to September 1st, 1946; the Petition 57, which 


covers the time span from 1942 to December 


31st, 1990; and a Petition 78, which covered 


the period from 1967 to 1971 and is fairly 


specific. They were discussing maintenance 


carpenters and apprentice that worked in 100, 


200, 300 and 400 areas of Hanford. 


This is a ma-- this very large chunk of time -- 


what we chose to do with this, as we discussed 


with the Board, was to merge these into a 


single petition and evaluate them in two time 


periods, because there were clear splits with 


where the contractor changed in 1946, the 


DuPont years, and then after the DuPont years. 


So we presented that first part in July and 


this report will be the second part, which goes 


from September 1st, '46 until 1990. 


This second evaluation report was -- it's -- 


was issued September 9th, 19-- September 9th of 


2007. The previous evaluation report was 


issued in May 2007 and presented to the Board 


July 2007. 


 Previously the basis for the SEC 57 was -- 


petitioners provided information and affidavit 

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statements in support of the belief that 


accurate dose reconstruction over time is 


impossible for the Hanford workers in question. 


They claimed that personal monitoring data gaps 


exist in several of the individual workers. 


And finally, however, what qualified the 


petition, was that during the early time frame 


NIOSH identified some pre-1949 operational 


periods which no internal exposure monitoring 


was performed or was reliable. 


SEC 50 was qualified based on being completely 


encompassed by the class proposed by SEC 57. 


SEC 78 was qualified based on construction 


workers performed work that took place in these 


contaminated areas and sometimes required 


respiratory protection. They asserted that no 


bioassay monitoring was performed for this 


class, and they provided documentation 


regarding the potential for missing external 


dosimetry records. 


NIOSH evaluated the following class: All 


employees in all facilities and areas of the 


Hanford Nuclear Reservation from September 1st, 


1946 through December 31st, 1990 for this 


specific petition part. We evaluated the first 

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pa-- as ER Part 1 -- SEC 57 Part 1, so that's 


1943 through this September 1st, 1946 period. 


So what (unintelligible) look at? There's a 


tremendous amount of documentation for Hanford. 


Hanford estimates some 220 million records 


exist. There are buildings of documentation. 


So start out -- part of the -- to do techni-- 


to do dose reconstruction, NIOSH assembled a 


Technical Basis Document. This has been -- 


undergone several revisions. It is currently 


under review by the Board. And so over the 


last -- course of the last year, it has been 


the subject of a great deal of discussion. 


As is -- the document is a six-part document 


having an introduction, a description, how to 


do medical dose, what is the background for 


environmental dose, internal dosimetry, and 


external dosimetry. And some of those are 


fairly recent revisions, being June of 2007. 


A variety of Technical Information Bulletins 


that assist with dose reconstruction were also 


reviewed. These include maximum plausible 


doses to workers, OTIB-4, at atomic weapons 


employers; external coworker dosimetry data for 


Hanford site, OTIB-30; OTIB-39, internal 

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coworker dosimetry data; and OTIB-54, fission 


product acti-- fission and activation product 


assignment for internal dose related to beta 


and gross gamma analysis. Again, many of these 


are fairly recent documents. Additional 


Technical Information Bulletins include ambient 


dose reconstruction for DOE sites, X-ray dose 


reconstruction for Department of Energy sites, 


and also O-- apparently I missed the -- OTIB52, parameters to consider for processing 


claims for construction trade workers. 


We conducted many outreach meetings and 


interviews with unions and with the general 


public. These include -- so interviews include 


those provided as part of the Sanford Cohen 


Associates review -- I'm sorry, 


(unintelligible) keep (unintelligible) this 


button. For my laser pointer it's got a 


different one. The worker outreach meeting in 


2004, another one with the Atomic Metals Trade 


Council in January 2004. The -- and additional 


interviews include -- we had several in 2004. 


We had a specific -- we had several days where 


we addressed early workers and some of those 


went up to 1950. We were out there in March of 

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2007 for several days of worker interviews, and 


we had a number of people who came from the 


1943 to 1950 time frame. I didn't specifically 


put that because we followed that up with 


meetings on June 18th and June 19th with 


workers from '50 through that time frame. 


However, those workers and their interviews are 


included. We did -- we -- certainly as part of 


the ER 1 and understood that those existed as 


part of this ER 2. 


 The Site Research Database, we currently have a 


little over 1,000 documents that have been 


identified as pertinent. These include 


historical background on process descriptions, 


Hanford Engineering Work monthly reports, 


Hanford Instrument Section reports, incident 


documentation, epidemiological studies, 


documentation and affidavits supplied by the 


petitioner; information submitted as part of 


the Comprehensive Epidemiological Data 


Resource, the CEDR database. There's an 


extensive on-line documentation of the -- what 


they call the Hanford Declassified Document 


Retrieval System, the DDRS. This has a little 


over 130,000 documents available. The U.S. 

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Department of Energy OpenNet System; other 


documentation from the Department of Energy 


includes logbooks, radiation survey logs, 


monthly reports, special work permits. We 


conducted a number of special reviews of their 


records to query their databases to see what 


other records may assist with dose 


reconstruction and evaluating this Special -- 


this SEC. 


 Other sources of information include the REX, 


the Hanford Radiological Exposure Database. 


This is -- we also have -- there was a 


significant publication put together regarding 


the early years at Herbert Parker Memorial 


where they collected a lot of the publications 


from the very earliest times on the radiation 


protection practices. 


Some -- an overview of what -- the claims that 


we have to date. As of August 9th the same as 


what we -- as the evaluation report, we had 


2,564 claims. Eighteen -- 1,827 of those had 


dose reconstructions completed. In cases which 


included internal dosimetry data, 1,919; cases 


which contained external dosimetry data were 


2,370. In addition to those claims, our 

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Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews are 


performed for each dose reconstruction. And 


also these claims have been put into a 


database. Though it isn't described here, we 


actually have summary data that can be 


evaluated against these. 


Major operations for internal exposure included 


the fuel fabrication facilities for uranium and 


thorium operations; reactor operations. 


Chemical separations obviously were a very 


large part of the Hanford process. Plutonium 


finishing, and what -- this means converting 


from plutonium in a nitrate form to a finished 


metal product. And also they had separations 


of americium in some of those facilities. It 


was a major source in the late '60s for heat 


source development, including promethium, 


plutonium-238 and polonium-210. Obviously 


Hanford had conducted many research and 


development activities, and I put some of the 


radionuclides here. Certainly it would not 


encompass all the nuclides that are part of the 


R&D, but they're plutonium, americium, 


neptunium, some mixed fission products -- and 


one of these days I won't keep pushing the 

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button -- and also mixed activation products. 


Of course all of those generated significant 


amount of waste which we deal with today in a 


number of very -- very, very large tank farms 


and those of course contain mixed fission 


products, mixed activation products. Of course 


today the long-lived ones only -- plutonium and 


americium. 


The in-- the internal monitoring information, 


the bioassay, the analytes and methods change 


over time as methods improve and capabilities, 


and also the needs change. Plutonium includes 


total plutonium, and then later became isotope-


specific. You have plutonium-238, in addition 


to the -- for spectrometry you measure the 239 


and 240 at the same time, so that's why you 


have the plutonium-239 and 240. 


 Americium-241 bioassay by both whole body 


counting and urinalysis. 


Uranium total, and also isotopic for 234, 235 


and 238. 


Tritium, fission products; strontium-90, it's 


specifically -- and there are also other 


radionuclides including curium, promethium, 


carbon-14, neptunium, to name a few. 

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 This internal monitoring also includes hundreds 


per month, if not larger, thyroid scans, 


particularly in the very early years. Whole 


body methods became available in late 1950s and 


are -- continue through today. Air sampling 


was conducted at many of the facilities and 


locations at Hanford as well. 


 For plutonium, the potential source of exposure 


basically started in 1945 at most -- at many of 


the facilities. Urinalysis didn't start until 


September of 1946. This is one of the main 


reasons why the SEC -- that first part was 


granted. Many changes in the plutonium have -- 


chemistry have occurred over time and counting 


methods. And since 1983 the plutonium and 239 


-- 238 and 239 and 240 have been reported as 


separate analytes. 


The reason I mention this is if you look at the 


graph and look -- as if they doubled right 


here. This is actually a double reporting. 


The 238 -- they -- some -- not everyone had 


both, but there's a large increase in 1983. 


Probably a very similar level, but we have 


around 2,000 analyses per month in the REX 


database. One of the limitations of the REX 

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we're going to see on some of the other graphs 


is that they have a huge physical paper record. 


Some of that stuff gets into the REX database ­

- we actually get all the hard copy records. 


Not everything has been entered into the REX 


database, so this is an underestimate of how 


many records exist, particularly with respect 


to the early years. 


 Principal bioassay methods would have been 


urinalysis. You also have, of course, chest 


counting for Americium-241 in the later years. 


And for some workers, fecal sampling was done. 


Americium -- and this may be confusing to some 


people that oftentimes it is a contaminant of 


the plutonium matrix. It is not a separate 


product. Usually it's just -- it's something 


that in-grows with time after the material is 


irradiated. It's created by plutonium-241; 


it's a decay product of plutonium-241. 


However, back in the late 19-- in the early 


1950s, beginning in 1949, to -- to support 


essentially the nuclear chemistry operations of 


the U.S., they began to separate americium and 


this operation continued until 1976 when they 


had a very large glovebox explosion which ended 

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the operations -- americium operations at 


Hanford. 


 Specific activity of americium-241 is about 55 


times higher than plutonium-239. Operations --


for recovery or -- included both the 231-Z and 


later in the 242-Z of the plutonium finishing 


plant. 


 For production rates -- we were unable to 


(unintelligible) production rates throughout 


all time. We do have some of the very early 


ones and some of the later ones. The glovebox 


explosion that occurred in 1976 had over 100 


grams of plutonium on a column. Early years 


may have been the order of a few grams to ten 


grams per month, but a lot of the intermediate 


time frames are hard to tell. Again, a much 


higher specific activity than plutonium. 


As I'd mentioned, the highest actinide exposure 


to a U.S. -- in U.S. history occurred as a 


result of a column explosion in 1976. 


We have found that no bioassay program prior to 


1964 exists, no urinalysis or chest counting 


methods. In addition to that, these early 


years -- basically were done in -- in fume 


hoods, a lot of the separation products, so 

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there certainly is potential for -- for 


exposure. 


The 1964 REX database shows only 41 plutonium ­

- americium-241 bioassay measurements. These 


are for 19 workers, and probably are the 


baseline for the new 242-Z process. In vivo 


methods start in 1968 with the availability of 


the chest counter. 


These are the number of bioassay records 


available in the REX database. You can see in 


1976 they went from doing a few dozen to 


somewhere on the order of 800, probably in 


response to this very large accident. 


In addition to plutonium and americium, you 


also have some other actinides that -- curium, 


we had curium-242 and 242 (sic). They 


conducted separation of 244 curium in the 325 


building in the 1970s. You also see some of 


the heavier actinides, including californium 


and berkelium. 


 Tritium production occurred beginning in around 


1949, historically called P-10. Separation of 


tritium occurred in the 108B facility from 1949 


to '55, and at the PRTR, the Plutonium Recycle 


Test Reactor -- Reactor facility from 1960 to 

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1990 -- 1969, I apologize. The early methods 


at Hanford for tritium in urine are described 


in about 1949. As with many sites, the tritium 


dose was stored with the external radiation 


data as part of the whole body dose. Tritium 


is a -- essentially acts like water and 


distributes through your whole body so they 


used the (unintelligible) stored the results as 


part of your whole body dose. 


 The tritium bioassay results, the individual 


analyses, are not included in our record. We 


do not get those. We get the dose from the 


site. Those dose data are used -- it's a 


fairly straightforward calculation and 


certainly things have changed with time, but 


they are modified to -- to use the more current 


biological models as dose methods. 


These slides need to be bigger. They get too 


big a -- I should have had more graph, but this 


provides some level of -- the graph 


(unintelligible) urine Table 5-29 provides some 


level of what the mean dose was for the various 


years. Essentially we use a coworker study to 


assign the tritium dose, and so looking at the 


-- the data, you see from 1955 to 1960 there's 

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insufficient data. There wasn't -- there was 


very little tritium monitoring or tritium dose 


that went on. 


Uranium was started of course since the very 


beginning of the Hanford facilities. It was 


used to load the -- the fuel cores, and so they 


began machining that at the very beginning in 


1944. You don't have urinalysis until '47. At 


around 1948 essentially they -- they determined 


that it's reliable. Before that they had 


problems with the chemistry. 


Presented a number of -- in addition, just the 


-- the machining -- the fuel separations and 


also the separation facilities at a number of 


different facilities that have uranium 


isotopes. Later we have -- in addition to 


bioassay methods, we also have in vivo methods. 


This provides some level of detail. Again, 


this is always biased in the low -- to the low 


because not all the early records are in there. 


You can see that there's -- beginning around 


1948, 1949, 1,000 to 4,000 measurements done. 


And that continues until the late 1960s. 


Fission and activation products, this is one of 


the areas where the REX database clearly does 

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not have all the data because beginning in 


1949, '49, there were thousands of measurements 


that were done. They're detailed in the -- in 


the records. These fission and activation 


bioassays started in 1946. They were 


considered reliable in '48. They continued to 


1965, at which time they were replaced by whole 


body counting and specific urinalysis for 


strontium -- strontium-90. So you see some 


level beginning -- the REX database beginning 


to have an accurate or -- some level of numbers 


at around 1958 showing around 5,000 per year. 


You see that it drops off as the strontium-90­

specific analyses take over, and this doesn't 


include the whole body counts. 


 Promethium was another heat source. You see 


that we have on the order of a few hundred 


samples per year. This is the primary time 


that it was -- when it was used. They used 


very large quantities. Heat source are on the 


order of kilocurie-type levels. Twenty-nine 


bio samples were known to have been taken, were 


-- 29 bioassay samples were known to have been 


taken following an incident in 1963. These do 


not show up in the REX, but they were detailed 

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in a -- in a report. It was monitored using 


urinalysis and some fecal sampling. 


That's not good. 


(Pause) 


There we go, polonium. Didn't want to let go; 


I hit the wrong button. 


Okay. In the very beginning for polonium, 


Hanford irradiated canned bismuth and shipped 


these to Mound. This has been the -- a 


deliberation with the Board bef-- coming to you 


guys before. They did not process the 


material. They irradiated bismuth to create 


polonium-210 and material was shipped for 


processing to Mound laboratories. Later 


polonium-210 was evaluated as a heat source in 


the late 1960s. You will see that the bioassay 


for pluton-- for polonium-210 is indicated. In 


1968 we have several hundred polonium bioassay 


measurements, and sporadically a few samples 


per year through 1983. 


In vivo measurements began in 1959. They 


became essentially routine as one of the major 


operations. Chest counting was begun in 1967 


for the uranium workers. Thyroid scans were 


conducted, as I previously mentioned, for the 

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workers in the separation canyons. Hundreds of 


scans per month were -- were conducted. 


Thorium work started as early as 1946. They 


mentioned 150 pounds of thorium was brought on 


site and was machined and -- straight for use 


in the reactors. Continued at significant 


levels until 1970. Beginning in 1960 whole 


body counting methods were -- were available 


for -- capable of evaluating thorium-232. Some 


records of alpha spectrometry results for 


thorium are also in the record. 


 These next few slides really -- for background 


levels to provide some evaluation of what kind 


of photon and beta -- beta-gamma exposure we 


have available. I don't want to belabor it too 


long, but just to show some of the 


distribution. One of the difference at 


(unintelligible) plutonium finishing plant you 


see the less-than-30 keV associated with the 


plutonium handling. Other separation areas you 


see the -- the high prod-- you see a lot of the 


high-energy fission product gamma rays. In the 


fuel fabrication facilities we see the uranium 


spectra. 


 And briefly just some of the neutron areas -- I 

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don't want to go through these individually -- 


they certainly include the reactor areas. Many 


of the 200 areas have neutron as -- neutrons 


present. And of course the 300 and 400 areas 


as well. 


External monitoring information -- this is 


perhaps a bit strong, but essentially the 


dosimeters assigned to all workers that entered 


restricted 100, 200 and 300 areas is the 


documented practice. Certainly there are -- we 


recognize that there are workers who were not 


adequately monitored, including construction 


workers. That's why we use construction worker 


methods to evaluation those classes. 


External monitoring methods include, in the 


very early years, the pencil ionization 


chamber. Those were of course one of the -- 


used in the very beginning. Later the film 


dosimeter from '44 to '72 was used. A two-


element dosimeter was used from 1944 to March 


of 1957. Weekly results were included in the 


individual's cards, and the MDA -- the minimum 


detectible activity -- I'm going to 


(unintelligible) would have been -- it would 


have been around 30 millirem. From March of 

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1957 to December 31st, '71 they used a multi-


element film badge. 


On January 1st, 1972 the thermoluminescent 


dosimeter was -- began use. Several variations 


have been used over time. They used the basic 


TLD for -- assigned to personnel expected to 


have a low chance of dose from 1972 to 1988. 


They had a multi-purpose TLD from 1972 to '94 


that was -- actually had two different designs; 


a five-chip design from 1972 to '77 and again 


from '83 to '95, and a four-chip design from 


1977 to 1983. Since 1995 a commercial 


Harshaw/Bicron system has been in use. 


 Extremity monitoring began in 194-- began in 


1945 with a simple ring badge; has changed over 


time from film to TLD; a variety of filter 


configurations. Wrist dosimetry is also seen 


in places where hand and forearm exposures are 


a concern. '46 to '89 when we review the REX 


database we have about an average of 530 


workers per year with extremity monitoring 


results. This is included with the EEOICPA 


claim information. 


Neutron monitoring began in 1944 with use of 


boron-lined PICs. The neutron -- the NTA film 

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was used from 1950 to 1971. There's a 


significant change in '58. From '50 to '58 a 


two-element neutron dosimeter was used. It was 


calibrated with polonium-beryllium source, 


which is a fairly high-energy source. 


In 1958 a multi-- two changes occurred. They 


began using a multi-element NTA, and they also 


-- which had a cadmium and tin filter which 


allowed the monitoring for thermal neutrons, 


and they also began calibrating with plutonium 


fluoride, a source of significant concern on 


plutonium fluoride operations in the Z plant. 


TLD began use of course in the -- on the 1st of 


January, 1972. 


NIOSH agrees that pre-1972 NTA film neutron 


dose is likely biased low. Dose reconstruction 


using neutrons is feasible using claimant-


favorable neutron-to-photon dose conversion 


factors. In addition to numerous weekly, 


monthly, annual and topical reports, we've also 


obtained at least -- we've also found at least 


250 boxes of survey log sheets that have been 


identified showing the measurements that 


occurred in the facilities are actually going 


to be -- those had not been retrieved. We're 

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actually in the process of re-- of retrieving 


those next week. 


1957 analysis for the AEC indicated that 


approximately 70 percent of the dose at the 


reactors occurred during shutdown. So 


essentially at the -- at the reactor facilities 


there's not a neutron present for the -- a 


presence during the -- when the reactor's non-


operational. So using a neutron-to-photon 


ratio when a reactor is not on is a very 


claimant-favorable process. 


A couple of graphs just to provide some of the 


1945 -- as we explored the -- the record at 


Hanford we found where they had completely 


mapped the front face of these reactors where 


these people were working, showing -- it 


actually shows the total neutron beta-gamma 


dose across the entire face of this reactor. 


Something they were clearly concerned with the 


-- with the dose. In '45 they did not have TLD 


dosimetry, but they were doing measurements to 


evaluate the photon and neutron dosimetry. 


One thing I did want to mention that those were 


three separate reactors, the B, D and F 


reactor. 

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Now I apologize for the quality of this. This 


is a scanning image, but this is a 1955 -- and 


there's a -- this is about a 25- or 30-page 


document that shows a series of neutron and 


photon measurements that were conducted at 


numerous different areas within the -- in this 


case we have the K East reactor -- showing the 


slow, intermediate and fast neutron flux and 


dose, in addition to the gamma rays that were 


obtained. 


Other routes of exposure include occupational 


medical X-ray. They did receive routine 


medical X-rays. NIOSH has procedures and 


records available to evaluate this dose. 


 Environmental dose, records and models exist to 


evaluate the exposure from environmental 


releases. 


 And for unmonitored workers although most 


process workers were monitored, unmonitored 


workers' dose from external sources may be 


estimated using coworker methods. 


 Some specific petition topics that -- that 


addressed -- that the -- petitioners' issue 


were the Hanford workers were inadequately or 


inconsistently monitored. Radiation exposure ­
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- overexposure and radiation doses potentially 


incurred by members of all classes at Hanford 


were not monitored or consistently monitored 


through individual monitoring or area 


monitoring. 


NIOSH evaluated -- evaluation findings include 


-- they reviewed the concern. It's evident 


from the records available and the published 


monitoring practices at Hanford that all moni-- 


that not all workers were monitored. However, 


large amounts of monitoring data exists for 


Hanford employees, particularly those employees 


who had the jobs with highest exposure 


potentials. Gaps in monitoring records for 


specific employees can be filled in 


conservatively using available coworker data. 


Petitioner issues include Hanford construction 


workers were not monitored for internal dose, 


and noted a lack of internal monitoring for 


construction trades between '67 to '71. 


Construction workers exposed to outside air 


releases without respiratory protection and 


that they had limited access to properly 


functioning respirators. 


 NIOSH findings include that the -- in addition 

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to the previously discussed evaluation -- that 


being on the previous page; I'm sorry, I didn't 


make that clear -- that NIOSH reviewed several 


individual dose reconstructions associated with 


construction trades from the '67 to time -- to 


'71 time frames which -- which do show this 


lack of monitoring data for some workers. 


Continuing on that, though, that they can be 


covered with the conservative assumptions and 


existing coworker data and the application of 


the construction trade worker OTIB. And then 


we also include that we do not take protection 


factors into account when assessing personal 


dose under this radiological dose 


reconstruction program. It eliminates the need 


to consider or account for the subsequent 


performance or failure of personal protective 


equipment for EEOICPA dose reconstructions. 


 Petitions also express a concern for under-


recording of neutron dose, especially in the 


'57 -- the 1950 to '71 time frame. And we 


concur, as part of our ongoing review of the 


Board, that the TLD systems had a technological 


inadequacy for measuring -- for accurately 


measuring neutron dose and that -- however, we 

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do believe that a claimant-favorable assignment 


of neutron dose, based on the application of 


neutron-to-photon dose ratio supported by 


Hanford field measurements and other monitoring 


that can be done, including Attila and Monte 


Carlo methods, can be used for external -- 


external neutron dose reconstruction. 


Based on the absence -- however, the 


feasibility of internal dose reconstruction, we 


find the absence of bioassay data for the 


period prior to 1960 for thorium and the period 


pre-19-- up to 1968 for americium, NIOSH has 


concluded internal dose reconstruction is not 


feasible for those radionuclides in selected 


facilities. And a health -- as part of this 


two-pronged test, a health endangerment 


determination is required, and we find that the 


workers' health may have been endangered due to 


exposure to thorium and americium exp... 


 Feasibility of external dose reconstruction is 


that the recorded external dosimetry photon 


data are extensive and sufficient for external 


dose reconstruction, especially when coupled 


with this -- the coworker data that... 


Turning -- as summary, we find that dose 

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reconstruction is not feasible for thorium in 


the period 1946 to 1959; for americium the 


period 1949 through 1968. And we find that all 


external and all other sources -- that internal 


dosimetry are re-- that dose reconstruction is 


feasible. 


 So the recommended class definition, all 


employees of the DOE, its predecessor agencies 


and DOE contractors or subcontractors who were 


monitored, or should have been monitored, for, 


one, internal thorium radiological exposures 


from September 1, 1946 through December 31st, 


1959 in the three -- in the following 300 area 


facilities: the Metal Fabrication Building 


(313), the Reactor Fuel Manufacturing Pilot 


Plant (306), and the 300 Area Maintenance Shop 


and Radiochemistry Laboratory (306); 


 or, two, internal americium radiological 


exposures from January 1, 1949 through December 


31st, 1968 in the following areas: the 


Isolation Building (231-Z), the Waste Treatment 


Facility (242-Z), and the Plutonium Finishing 


Plant (234-5Z) while working at the Hanford 


Nuclear Reservation for a number of work days 


aggregating at least 250 work days, or in 

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combination with work days within the 


parameters established for one or more of the 


other classes of employees of the SEC, 


excluding ag-- aggregate work -- excluding 


aggregate work day requirements. 


 Additional information is available to the 


Board of course at the following location. 


With that, I'll take any questions. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Sam. Before we hear 


from the petitioners, let me ask if any of the 


Board members have questions for Sam while he's 


at the microphone, either for clarification or 


-- or comments. 


 (No responses) 


If not, we'll hear from the petitioners -- 


 DR. MELIUS: I have --

 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, Jim, did you have a comment or 

question? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I have a question, and I 

actually e-mailed this to Sam earlier. I guess 


I'm waiting for an answer. But in -- in the 


report you referred -- regarding the neutron-


photon ratio issue, which has been a issue that 


we've been concerned about in -- in regard to 


the Hanford site that NIOSH and/or your 

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contractors were working on some other methods 


for estimating that ratio, and I was trying to 


obtain a schedule for -- for that -- that work, 


mainly in a practical sense so that we have to 


be able to schedule the work of the workgroup 


and our contractor for reviewing this and so I 


was just wondering if you have an update on 


that now or if we'll obtain that information 


later, or if you're unable to estimate it at 


this point in time, which -- 


 DR. GLOVER: I believe I did. Right now we -- 


next week we will be at Hanford. We've 


identified 250 boxes of these -- these survey 


reports. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 DR. GLOVER: We have pulled 50 of those in 


addition to around 35 other boxes we've -- have 


actually found (unintelligible) to be the 


original tritium bioassay results and a number 


of other different documents. So next week Tim 


Taulbee's actually traveling to Hanford to 


begin collection of that data, going through 


that looking for the neutron survey results as 


part of that. 


We'll have a better idea -- we've actually -- 

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then of course -- compiled numerous other 


reports as part of this, so we want to see how 


we're -- it's not a final thing, but next week 


we'll actually have a very good idea of where 


those are going to go. 


 DR. MELIUS: If you could communicate with the 


workgroup on that, it just would be helpful and 


-- and when we --


 DR. GLOVER: Yeah, I apologize, I was trying -- 


 DR. MELIUS: -- clear that up, that's -- I'm 


just -- we'd like to see (unintelligible) ask 


it. Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Any other questions at this 


point? Yes, Mr. Presley. 


 MR. PRESLEY: This is Bob Presley. Sam, on the 


uranium slide from -- looks like 1971 to 1984, 


we had a low level of bioassay analysis per 


year. Is that from low work level or is that 


from no records? Can you tell? 


 DR. GLOVER: I -- off the top -- I don't know 


off the top of my head if that was associated 


with reduced operations, which did happen 


starting in the '70s. We had a switch from -- 


separating reactor-based fuel from Hanford 


irradiated fuel, so there were some changes. 

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40

 MR. PRESLEY: Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other questions? 


 (No responses) 


Okay. Let's then hear from the petitioners. 


We have Ms. Hoyt on the line. 


 MS. HOYT: I'd like to thank the Board for 


their time and thank Dr. Glover for sending us 


a copy of his presentation. One of the things 


that I'd like to start with is the proposed 


class definition as it is written in the SEC 


evaluation report. It really is not clear, it 


just is specifying buildings, and in 


conversation with Dr. Glover he assured us that 


all employees are included in this class. This 


is not made clear in the body of the report. 


The fact that all employees are included needs 


to be made clear to all parties, especially to 


the Department of Labor. 


Another item, NIOSH has specified in the 


evaluation report buildings in the 300 area in 


which thorium was located. At the Advisory 


Board meeting in July we recall Dr. Ziemer 


asked why they listed each building. As we 


recall, the reply was that it covered all of 


the 300 area. We contend that the whole area 

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is contaminated, not just specific buildings or 


limited to inside the buildings. 


NIOSH has specified certain buildings in the 


200 area in which americium was located. We 


contend that americium was across the site, not 


limited to specific buildings or limited to the 


inside of buildings. 


There is an EPA radiation protection program, 


and I have an excerpt here. It says, quote, 


People may be directly exposed to gamma 


radiation from americium-241 by walking on 


contaminated land. They may also be exposed to 


both alpha and gamma radiation by breathing in 


americium-contaminated dust or drinking 


contaminated water. Living near a weapons-


testing or production facility may increase 


your chance of exposure to americium-241. 


It is our understanding the findings in the 


SC&A report still have not been resolved by the 


Hanford working group. Without resolving all 


of the findings, there cannot be a defensible 


claimant-favorable evaluation of any petition. 


We dispute the fact that NIOSH claims that SEC57-1 and 57-2 that external dose reconstruction 


is feasible. 

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 The evaluation report states, quote, All 


interviewees indicated that employees who 


entered radiologically-controlled areas wore 


external dose monitoring devices, end quote. 


We question whether or not the interviews were 


conducted in accordance with the SC&A 


guidelines. 


Also, at the worker outreach meetings former 


employees stated that not everybody wore 


monitoring devices. They told how they would 


pick up monitoring devices at the buildings, 


and at the end of the shift they would throw 


them all in a bucket. There is no monitoring 


during transportation through the areas. Buses 


drove through noxious vapors and yellow clouds. 


Former workers stated that they wore monitoring 


devices under various layers of clothing and 


protective gear, and the monitoring devices 


were not on the areas of the body that were 


exposed. 


One of the rad techs, people that do radiation 


monitoring out there, stated that the -- at one 


of the worker outreach meetings he said that 


records of his personal exposure incidents were 


not accurate. 

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 The transcripts for the June and July meetings 


are still unavailable. This is burdening and ­

- this burden-- this is burdensome to all 


involved and hinders the process. Lack of 


funding and workload assignments are no excuse 


for not producing these in a timely manner. 


 A publication entitled "Hanford Site 


Occupational Internal Dose, ORAUT 


(unintelligible) 00-5", there are serious flaws 


in this document. The review of the 


NIOSH/ORAU procedure and method used for dose 


reconstruction dated January 17th, 19-- or 2005 


by SC&A report states that both the internal 


and external are deficient. SC&A's review of 


these procedures identifies a number of 


technical inaccuracies and errors. 


 The evaluation report states in general 


information obtained through the interviews 


with former employees and facility experts was 


consistent with that found in NIOSH documents 


regarding the Hanford facility. We ask which 


experts are you referring to. There's a lot of 


credibility given to interviewed experts, and 


they are referenced repeatedly. Nowhere in 


this evaluation report does it deal with the 

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affidavits of falsification of records. There 


are affidavits stating monitoring records were 


falsified, supervisors coerced employees to 


change records or be sent home without pay. 


There was a -- another meeting at Hanford and 


which NIOSH attended and the publication was 


NIOSH dose reconstruction project meeting at 


Hanford atomic metal trades council 


(unintelligible) dated January 13th, 2004. On 


page 4 of this document, quote, 


(unintelligible), before good readings were 


kept, a lot of people were exposed due to 


fooling with exposure to get overtime. People 


needed exposure time to make the money they 


wanted. In the '90s Navy came in and things 


improved, but many people are gone, end quote. 


That is another -- this also shows that it's 


been common knowledge that the records have 


been falsified and are not accurate. 


 The evaluation report states current and past 


Hanford workers have access to their records at 


any time upon request, end quote. We have no 


confidence in this statement. This is a 


prevailing concern. 


An excerpt from the national advocate's call 

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dated August 16th, 2007. Caller, raise the 


question if we are sure that DOE is giving 


NIOSH and DOL all the documents in their 


position. Another caller said the program 


lacks the necessary transparency, and suggested 


that perhaps Sanford Cohen & Associates, 


through the Advocacy Board -- or through the 


Advisory Board, could be tasked with quality 


assurance of DOE records. I blanked out the 


name to protect those people's privacy. If the 


Board needs those names specifically, I can 


give them to them. 


Jack J. Fix is mentioned in many of the 


documents regarding Hanford. He has a conflict 


of interest, having been the project 


manager/principal investigator for the Hanford 


external dosimetry problem -- program from 1979 


to 1995. He is still active with a contractor 


to NIOSH/ORAU, which is Dade Moeller & 


Associates. 


 It appears NIOSH continues to churn out dose 


reconstructions to crunch the numbers -- so 


many were submitted, so many were reviewed, so 


many were approved. NIOSH states that they are 


under-funded, so they can't get the transcripts 

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of the meetings out. But they can continue to 


do dose reconstruction, even though there are 


serious deficiencies, inaccuracies and errors. 


 Neutron exposure continues -- neutron exposure 


dose reconstruction continues to be an area of 


unresolved findings with SC&A. This evaluation 


report is confusing, unorganized and does not 


address lost or destroyed records or affidavits 


supporting the SEC petition 57 in all of its 


forms. 


 Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Ms. Hoyt. Is 


Ms. Carrico also wishing to make a statement? 


 (No responses) 


 Apparently not. Okay, thank you very much. 


I -- I do want to remind the Board that earlier 


this year we did take action on a petition from 


Hanford that covered the earlier years, '42 to 


'46, and you ma-- I just want you to have that 


in the back of your mind. This particular 


evaluation report most Board members just got 


within the last few weeks. It's a fairly 


extensive report, fairly complex. We earlier 


had tasked our contractor to review this 


report. That review is just barely underway. 

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I'd like to call on the chair of the working 


group -- the Hanford working group, Jim Melius, 


if you could give us a status report and kind 


of outline the path forward from this point for 


the Hanford petition. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. First can I ask -- I think 


it's a question for -- for Larry 'cause -- an 


issue that the petitioner brought up and I 


wanted to ask it also is -- is the issue that 


the process for attribution in the reports. As 


I recall, NIOSH was committed through their 


contractor to go through all the site profile 


reports and provide attribution of -- you know, 


sources for various information and so forth. 


I believe that was done for the Rocky Flats 


report and I'm -- I'm just curious what the 


status of that is for the Hanford report, at 


least on the -- I confess I'm just looking at 


it on the -- the web site now and it's in bits 


and pieces and different time frames, so I'm 


trying to get a sense of when that will be 


complete for that -- the Hanford report. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I believe -- I believe it's 


complete. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: Hanford reports that we have 


posted there have been fully annotated and 


attributed. 


 DR. MELIUS: Some of it goes back to 2004, 


Larry. That's all I -- it's in sections. 


That's why I was --


 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, the evaluation report is 


fully attributed and annotated. 


 DR. MELIUS: You know I knew that. No, I was 


asking about the site profile. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Oh, we'll have to check on that. 


I know --


 DR. MELIUS: Okay, if you could just -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- that the site profile chapters 


are all fully annotated. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I believe that there -- or a 


recent one that should have been. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: But I don't know that the earlier 


ones would have been. I'll check on that. 


 DR. MELIUS: And -- and given that -- I mean 


one is the petitioner's obviously raised the 


issue, but it's -- it's also that if we're -- 


in the evaluation report you're referring back 

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to the site profile report a lot. I just think 


it's helpful and there was a commitment to do 


that. I understand it's time and effort and so 


forth, but for something like this that we'll 


be reviewing, I think it -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- it's helpful and makes the 


process more transparent. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We'll make sure we report to the 


working group on that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Okay, I appreciate that. Yes, the 


-- had some -- some discussions this morning, 


and actually prior to this meeting I actually ­

- once we -- I received this report, not only 


was checking with -- with Sam about some sort 


of logistical issues, but also with John 


Morowitz (sic) and Arjun regarding the review 


of this eval-- evaluation report and based on ­

- on those discussion -- we think this is going 


to be a -- one, it's a large task. We were --


had started to do the site profile review and 


it -- and the major issue there was the -- a 


major issue was the neutron/photon ratio issue 


and that point, which is several months, if not 


a year ago, NIOSH was then starting to -- to do 

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a revision of the -- the methodology for that, 


which I think, as Sam has indicated, is in some 


ways still -- still under-- underway in terms 


of gathering additional information and -- and 


so forth. 


What we thought would be the -- this -- a way 


forward for this task, in order to try to, one, 


expedite what we can 'cause petitioners and 


claimants are -- are waiting on this, at the 


same time, given the scope of this report -- it 


covers a lot of years over a very large 


facility where I think NIOSH's work is still 


some extent under-- underway and so we may have 


a -- so to speak, a moving target to -- to 


evaluate. What we thought we'd do, and I'd be 


interested in feedback on this, is task the -- 


our contractor with first initially doing 


initial scoping effort on the evaluation report 


to identify key issues that they identified 


from an initial review of the report. We would 


then hold a meeting of the workgroup, probably 


by conference call, to then mutually determine 


a schedule for that review. And rather than 


trying to do a complete review of the 


evaluation report -- you know, deliver it at 

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one point in time -- we would just deliver it 


in -- incrementally in sections by issues in a 


way that would hopefully expedite the -- the 


review process, make it easier to -- to handle 


and easier to do the -- the workgroup meetings 


and so forth to try to re-- resolve comments 


and -- and reach some conclusions on that. So 


I believe we can start that process within the 


next month or so with a -- with a con-- 


conference call meeting of the -- the 


workgroup. Initially a rep-- refers to 


initially a report coming from SC&A that would 


scope out the issues and give us some idea of 


where they thought -- according to review. The 


same time as part of that scoping process, that 


would also give NIOSH an opportunity to give us 


feedback on where they were with any parts of 


the evaluation report or the site profile that 


they were updating. So rather than, you know, 


waste our efforts and time and money and so 


forth on reviewing something that was already 


being revised, we could wait till the revision 


is done if that's not going to delay things in­

- inappropriately. But at the same time I 


think we have to recognize that this will not 

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be a -- a quick process to resolve the full 


evaluation report. Again, we may be able to 


break off parts of -- and so forth and look -- 


look at it that way, so I would appreciate any 


-- any feedback on that suggestion or -- or 


comments. Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Certainly seems like a logical 


approach. Board members, you have any comments 


on this for Jim and the working group? 


And I might add, while you're thinking about 


your comments, that as we move forward in the 


proposed manner that the petitioners would be 


kept fully informed of all of the issues and 


invited to participate with the workgroup on -- 


on these various issues. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, ab-- absolutely and -- and I 


think it would also make it better for them to 


be able to, you know, focus, you know, on a 


particular issue as we go forward so they would 


be able to provide whatever additional 


information and if we need to seek out 


additional information from people wor-- who've 


worked at the site and can provide information 


to us, that would facilitate that process and ­

- rather than putting out a broad call for all 

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the information and expect people to completely 


understand this very, you know, lengthy and 


complicated report. 


 DR. WADE: Dr. Poston. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Poston? 


 DR. POSTON: I have two general comments. 


First, even though the report is dated the 14th 


of September, my recollection is we just 


received a review this week -- this past week 


and so I don't know about the rest of the 


Board, but I haven't had a chance to read that 


and digest it, so we need time. 


Secondly, if we're going to move ahead, and it 


sounds like Jim has a good plan, it seems to me 


that we need to do a better job with this 


privacy clearance. It's been almost four 


months since that meeting and the information 


has not been released to the petitioners, and I 


think that is absurd in terms of delaying 


getting the information out. So I would urge 


whoever has the stick there to get these things 


done in a more expeditious manner. 


 DR. WADE: That's my task. Tomorrow I'll be 


providing you with a matrix that updates all of 


the transcripts and all of their status, and we 

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can look at that and we can focus our efforts 


and we can see what the reality is. But I do 


understand that as a -- is a problem. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And thank you for your comment, 


John. And indeed most Board members have not 


had a chance to digest this report, and for 


that reason we're not in a position to take 


action on the report. Obviously the workgroup 


has to get engaged with it, as does the -- the 


-- our contractor. So this basically, although 


we have a recommendation from the -- from the 


agency, from NIOSH, a recommendation on the 


petition, it certainly appears to the Chair 


that we're not in a position to act on that 


other than to agree that we will continue to 


study their report. We will garner the 


information from our contractor in the manner 


as described by the workgroup chair and proceed 


on that basis. And I'm going to take it by 


consent that that's what we'll do unless I hear 


strong objections to that. 


If not, let me ask if the petitioners have any 


additional comments, having heard from the 


chair of the working group. Ms. Hoyt, if 


you're still there, do you have any additional 

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comments for us at this point? 


 MS. HOYT: I think that it sounds like a good 


plan and we thank the Board for keeping us 


informed and asking for our input. We would 


appreciate that. 


UNIDENTIFIED: We like working with the working 


group. That would be a very effective thing. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Then we will -- we 


will keep you informed and in the loop as we 


move forward on this. 


(Pause) 


BLIND REVIEW CASES WORKGROUP
 

Okay, before we take the break I'm going to use 


a few moments here to take care of a kind of a 


housekeeping matter, and that is I'm proposing 


to -- on advice from counsel, actually -- to 


appoint a new workgroup which shall be known as 


the workgroup on the selection of blind re-- 


dose reconstruction blind review cases. This 


workgroup will have the express task, which I'm 


expecting them to complete by tomorrow, of 


receiving from the Subcommittee on Dose 


Reconstructions suggestions on the list of 


proposed blind reviews that I believe has been 


distributed to the subcommittee. I'm -- I 

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would like Mark Griffon to chair the new 


workgroup and Wanda Munn to be the other 


member. We only ne-- it's a small workgroup. 


Your task would be to solicit from the members 


of the subcommittee their recommendations on 


the cases for the blind review to come up with 


a final recommendation for the Board on those 


cases. And we'll hopeful that you will have 


your report ready for this Board tomorrow, at 


which point we will dissolve the working group. 


It's my understanding that doing it this way 


will meet our legal requirements as far as 


confidentiality and other related matters, and 


will allow the selection to move forward. So 


that workgroup is hereby appointed. 


Now let me ask for questions. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Just one -- one question. You 


said the subcommittee members -- are we 


including alternates? I -- they were --


everybody was here yesterday, kind of like -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 


 MR. GRIFFON: And I don't know that Bob and -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: The alternates are members of the 


subcommittee. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right, and I don't know that -- 

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Bob, did you get the list? I'm not sure --


maybe --


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, you gave me 


your suggestions. 


 MR. PRESLEY: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, that's right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: In anticipation of the workgroup, 


he has given you his suggestions. Okay. 


And let me ask counsel -- I want to be assured 


that this -- this will meet our legal 


requirements as far as gathering the 


information by this workgroup and making a 


recommendation. 


MS. HOMOKI-TITUS: Yes. I just want to be 


clear that the suggestions that are being 


provided are being provided by individuals, not 


as a group recommendation. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The recommendations to Mark will 


be provided individually by various Board 


members, without collaboration with each other, 


yes. 


 Any other questions on this matter? 


 (No responses) 


Okay, thank you. It is so ordered. 

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While we are -- I'll take a further couple of 


minutes -- well, I -- oh, are we past our break 


time? 


 DR. WADE: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, one -- one -- this is -- be 


very rapid. Two of our newest members now have 


reached a point where they feel like their -- 


their time and abilities are not being fully 


utilized, and they have actually volunteered to 


participate in some additional workgroup 


activities. And with that in mind, I'd like to 


add Phil Schofield's name to the workgroup on 


the Nevada Test Site and Savannah River Site 


and the chair -- chairs of those groups can 


make a note and ask Dr. Lewis (sic) to add them 


 DR. WADE: Nevada Test Site --


 DR. ZIEMER: Nevada Test Site site profile 


workgroup and the Savannah River Site 


workgroup. And then we'll -- we'd like to add 


Josie Beach to the SEC issues group, Dr. 


Melius. So -- and those appointments the 


Chair's authorized to make and I so make them. 


Yeah, we'll add added manpower and womenpower 


to those workgroups. Thank you very much. 

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We'll now take a break, and when we return we 


will proceed with the Sandia Livermore 


petition. 


UNIDENTIFIED: 11:15? 


 DR. WADE: 11:15. 


 DR. ZIEMER: 11:15. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 10:45 a.m. 


to 11:15 a.m.) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, I'd like to call the meeting 


back into session. We're going to have a brief 


comment from either Larry or Kate from ORAU. 


Kate, are you -- this -- this is in answer to 


Dr. Melius's question on attribution, so I 


think we have the latest update on attribution 


of the Hanford material. Kate, ORAU, thank 


you. 


 MS. KIMPAN: Thank you. I need the short 


microphone. Hi, this is Kate Kimpan from ORAU. 


It's a pleasure to see you all and actually a 


pleasure to respond to this question which I 


believe, Dr. Melius, if I heard it right via 


the phone part of the Board, you asked about 


the Hanford TBD and whether A&A was complete on 


that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 

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 MS. KIMPAN: The Hanford TBD, as with many of 


our large TBDs, has multiple sections. All 


sections but the medical, which is the smallest 


of them, has been fully completed. The medical 


section is still in the resolving of comments 


and questions and so it has not been signed by 


OCAS. When we complete our review, of course, 


we are only doing this on behalf of OCAS. They 


have final say. So when I say completed, I'm 


typically talking about what's been done, 


blessed, signed and posted onto the web site. 


The medical portion is not yet. 


 Regarding this issue, because it was a -- a 


very -- it is a very important issue and I 


spoke about it at every meeting, if -- if -- if 


you'd like, I can give you a one-minute fuller 


update on an-- annotation and attribution. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead. 


 MS. KIMPAN: I know that -- let me get this 


(off microphone) (unintelligible). 


 (On microphone) Conflict or bias, conflict of 


interest has been an absolutely important issue 


to this group and you've been concerned. 
I 


wanted you to know that I've spoken about what 


these types were before. When the new policy 

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came into force, part of the ORAU team's 


compliance was to do a comprehensive review, as 


required by the policy, of our documents. We 


then did full annotation and attribution on any 


document where the original document owner 


would have been conflicted under the policy 


that didn't exist at the time. So we took the 


new policy, the current one; we looked through 


that lens, in an abundance of caution, and 


looked at the places where an owner would have 


been conflicted. We did those first for full 


annotation and attribution. I will tell you we 


included a couple of sites that we've much 


talked about at this table where there wasn't 


an actual conflict of interest, but where 


questions were raised -- the Paducah TBD, 


questions were raised and at the end of the day 


the lawyers and the -- the legal was that there 


wasn't really a conflict or bias problem there, 


but there were adequate questions raised, we 


included it in that first run of reviews. 


We are in full compliance, the ORAU team is, 


with the policy as it is written right now. 


And we can obviously continue to remain in 


compliance with that. Our new required 

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postings are all listed on our web. 


For those of you -- and I know this group will 


be among them -- in order to not have a lot of 


confusing things on the web, if someone does 


not work for the ORAU team now, their conflict 


or bias information is removed. As you're 


going through documents -- we obviously don't 


go back and take a document that was written 


four years ago and say it wasn't written by 


who's -- who was on the document. If you're 


ever looking through these documents and you 


find a name and you go to the web site and you 


don't see their information, we have retained 


all of that information. It is both available 


-- it's available to anyone, including the 


public, but we don't have it up on the web 


because it would be bad information. Someone 


might have left my employ three years ago and 


the information wouldn't be current. For my 


employees, for everyone who works with and for 


ORAU team, our info is current. But if you see 


a name on a document from the first day of this 


program that you're not finding their 


information, let me know through OCAS and we'd 


be more than glad to provide you with those 

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historical conflict of interest declarations by 


those folks. There's -- there's no intent to 


remove that from you all seeing it. It's just 


having in on our web site now, with inaccurate 


information, just isn't the right thing to do. 


Any questions or other concerns? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, other question? 

Go ahead. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I -- I don't want to prolong 


this neces-- but I would ask you to reconsider 


that last policy because I think it's -- for 


those of us on the Board who have those 


questions, we've heard you and we know -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- how to pursue that. But for --


somebody on the outside will see something 


with, you know, Joe Smith's name on it and have 


no way of, you know, finding out about that 


person's background at the time. And I suspect 


that they'll end up having certain sections of 


the report attributed to them as a source -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- and I think it's important that 


people still be able to get that information. 

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And I would think that their conflicts of 


interest or bias, whatever, statements at the 


time, when they were in your employ, would 


still be relevant 'cause that would be their 


conflicts when they wrote the document. So --


I mean I think they should be properly 


caveated, this is not up to date, so that if 


somebody has a question about what Joe Smith's 


done in the last four years, it's not on there 


 MS. KIMPAN: That's right. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- but -- but it might be just a 


little bit more -- in terms of transparency to 


have that available such -- you do have an area 


on -- on the web site where old documents are, 


older versions of documents -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Yes. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- are -- are referenced, and I 


think if there was some link there, some way of 


doing that -- so I'd ask you to consider doing 


that. I don't need an answer now, I don't -- 


 MS. KIMPAN: Thank you for that suggestion -- 

 DR. MELIUS: -- but I think it'd be feasible... 

 MS. KIMPAN: -- Dr. Melius. I will tell you 

what's happened several times, for what it's 

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worth. Now it's mostly people who have a web 


access where either Larry or myself will get 


those questions, so there are folks that have 


asked that are getting those answers. But 


you're right, we certainly want to make those ­

- that information is intended to be publicly 


available. We're just not trying to create any 


confusion as we proceed. 


 DR. MELIUS: No, I -- I appreciate that and I 


would just add that -- that -- I know we're 


having an update on the web site I believe 


tomorrow. But the web site is confusing to 


navigate, at least up until now. It's 


improving and it -- in some ways, but -- but I 


think not everyone will know where -- knows 


where to look and -- and --


 MS. KIMPAN: Right. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- so forth. I think it's hel--


the more we can do to link things and have a 


complete information there, the better, 'cause 


I think it's probably the best way of -- of 


making this information available and it's the 


least burdensome to NIOSH and ORAU in terms of, 


you know, people having to request things and 


so forth, so... 

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 MS. KIMPAN: Very good suggestion, Dr. Melius. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Kate. 


 DR. WADE: Always a pleasure. 


SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORY-LIVERMORE SEC PETITION


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's proceed with the SEC 


petition evaluation report for the Sandia 


National Laboratory Livermore. Sam Glover is 


going to present that. One -- the petitioner, 


Gerald Giovacchini, if I've pronounced his name 


correctly -- if not, forgive me, Gerald -- but 


are you on the line? 


(Pause) 


Yes, he is on the line. After Dr. Glover gives 


his report, Gerald, we'll give you an 


opportunity to make your comments and then 


proceed from there. Thank you. Dr. Glover. 


 DR. GLOVER: Okay, now it -- can we -- I've got 


this back on. Is it working okay? All right. 


Now I've got no excuse not to properly use the 


equipment, so my laser and my clicker. 


All right. I'm going to pre-- this is an 


update to a presentation that we did in May of 


2007. It is SEC Petition 59 and it deals with 


X-ray diffraction units at the Sandia Livermore 


-- Sandia National Lab Livermore facility. 

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A little bit -- this will be some repetitive 


information -- some people weren't here, but 


since it has been four or five months since the 


presentation, I thought I'd go ahead and 


reiterate those slides. 


 Site history, Sandia Lab Livermore was 


established in 1956. It was to provide 


assistance to the Lawrence Livermore National 


Lab regarding nuclear weapons design. Its 


primary mission from '56 to '89 was design and 


testing of non-nuclear components for 


Livermore. 


A little bit about the petition. On May 5th, 


2006 a petition was submitted to NIOSH on 


behalf of a class of employees who included all 


X-ray technologists and materials scientists 


who worked in the X-ray Diffraction and 


Fluorescence Laboratories in the buildings 913, 


room 113, room 128, and in building 941, room 


128, from the period December 1st, 1967 through 


December 31st, 1990. 


On October 4th, 2006 the petition was 


qualified. On March -- March the 29th, 2007 


evaluation report was issued. Immediately 


before the meeting, on April 25th, NIOSH 

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received new addition -- new information from 


the petitioner. On May 2007 the evaluation 


report and new information was also provided by 


the petitioner at the May 2007 Advisory Board 


meeting. At that time the Advisory Board asked 


NIOSH to provide an update that addressed the 


new information. And September 6, 2007 an 


addendum to the evaluation report was approved 


-- or was issued, is probably the most correct 


term. 


Briefly, the evaluated class included -- I was 


-- it was modified by roo-- by removing 


Building 940 room -- 941, room 128, because it 


occurred after -- outside the period that was 


covered, 1992. NIOSH evaluated the following 


class: All X-ray technologists and material 


scientists who worked at Sandia National Lab 


Livermore in those buildings and rooms so 


specified from December 1st, 1967 to December 


31st, 1990. 


I want to be clear. This is a very small 


class, approximately three people. 


 The information was provided but I did want to 


update it. At the time of this we had a draft 


site profile. This was actually at a -- an 

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official Rev. 0 was actually issued after the 


initial prep-- preparation of the material. It 


was issued May 1st, 2007. A number of 


Technical Information Bulletins was -- were 


evaluated as part of this, including maximum 


internal dose estimates for DOE claims, dose 


reconstruction from occupations related to X-


rays, and also internal dose reconstruction, 


OTIB-60. 


As I said, this is a very small class. Cases 


which meet the class definition -- these are 


cases that have been submitted to NIOSH -- are 


one. Dose reconstructions which are completed 


are zero. Dose re-- cases which include 


internal dosimetry and external dosimetry, we 


had information for both. Of course the 


Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview was 


conducted as part of this. 


So petition provi-- the petitioner provided a 


letter April 25th which was read at the Board 


meeting. On June 7th a follow-up call was 


conducted with the petitioner. On July 16th a 


petitioner letter and an affidavit were also 


received. September 11th an additional letter 


from the petitioner and an affidavit from a 

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health physicist/industrial hygienist at Sandia 


National Lab Livermore was also received. This 


was received after the issuance of the 


evaluation report, but it was evaluated prior 


to the -- correct me -- as preparation for this 


presentation. 


 Several other sources of information include 


CD-- the Centers for Disease Control web site, 


cutaneous radiation injury, facts for 


physicians and radiation emergencies. It's 


basically to show -- provides information 


(unintelligible) effects caused by acute 


incidents of X-ray exposures to the skin. We ­

- and in preparation for this we also had a 


physician evaluate the -- the lymph nodes 


associated with this extremity dose. And 


another report was the U.S. Department of 


Health, Education and Welfare radiation safety 


in X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy report. 


 September 6th evaluation findings of the 


petition were submitted as an addendum to the 


SEC report. 


Just to reiterate what the basis was is that -- 


the basis was that unmonitored, unrecorded or 


inadequately monitored exposure incidents 

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occurred. They associated with an incident 


that occurred in 1978 that was alleged by the 


petitioner and others that was documented in 


1979 that was an accident with the beam turned 


on and at low power. This petition provided 


evidence that potential unmonitored exposure 


with no personal or area monitoring data for 


the first exposure incident. 


Further, SNL did not provide -- Livermore did 


not provide permanently mounted instrumentation 


for continuous recording of the ionaz-- 


ionizing radiation that was being emitted. A 


statement by the petitioner about the -- the 


type of instrumentation that was used. 


A little bit about the radiological operations. 


X-ray diffraction -- as we discussed, XRD is a 


very high-dose possibility, on the order of 


tens of thousands of rads per minute. It is a 


very -- it's like a laser beam, essentially. 


It's a very small beam that's used to evaluate 


samples, so the -- very high, intense radiation 


source in the lo-- in a -- in a very localized 


area. And -- and fluorescence laboratories 


were located in Building 913, (unintelligible) 


room 113 and 128. Essentially include prep-- 

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preparation of samples and testing with this X-


ray diffraction and fluorescence equipment. 


Radioactive sources include depleted uranium, 


small sealed sources, and obviously this X-raygenerating equipment. 


 These were issues discussed with the 


petitioner. There's approximately 14 points. 


I'm just going to briefly discuss what they are 


without providing you a great deal of detail. 


These are addressed in the report. They 


discussed -- these are the points that were 


provided, that personal monitoring records that 


are unavailable. However the class records are 


available. That the directional nature of the 


X-ray radiation emitted from the unit was -- 


was outside the monitoring device or the badge 


-- it wasn't in a badged area. That workers 


devised makeshift shielding because the shields 


could not be used for oversized samples. 


 The unrecorded exposure incidents associated 


with the operation of the X-ray unit, 


specifically a 1978 undocumented exposure and a 


-- and a documented exposure incident in 1979. 


The ability to bound exposures, that we were 


unable to -- he felt we were unable to bound 

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the exposures as described using the 


information that was available. He also 


discussed differences in the workload among the 


potential class, and impact of this difference 


on the ability to reconstruct dose. 


 Information was discussed regarding the use of 


sealed sources and the preparation of samples, 


essentially using a mortar and pestle 


(unintelligible) homogenize or to have these 


samples (unintelligible) specifically prepared 


and the exposures that were part of that. He 


provided statements and discussed by -- 


statements made by two doctors that ex-- 


exposures resulted in cancer for the petitioner 


and inappropriateness or inadequacies 


associated with the risk models for radioactive 


material exposures and the determination of 


probability of causation. 


So exposure data was forwarded to petitioner in 


June 2007, and actually additional information 


-- which was recently provided by the site -- 


was forwarded, I believe within the last week, 


some later post-1990, I believe tritium and 


uranium data. And so this was not pertinent to 


the work that he performed in the X-ray 

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diffraction lab. Concerns about attempting to 


reconstruct dose without ascertaining the 


predominant energy of the X-ray beam -- one of 


the issues with the beam is that they're 9 keV 


copper X-ray, so it is an extremely low-energy 


X-ray that's not very penetrating. 


He expressed concern about the security badge 


location in relationship to the dosimeter and 


the shielding of the dosimeter by the security 


badge. 


 Again, I believe we've already discussed the 


use of copper X-ray target, and sometimes iron, 


but not at the time of the major exposures. 


That the dosimeter -- he also believed the 


dosimeter used at the time would not provide a 


valid account of the radiation dose, and the 


lack of specific monitoring data, either 


personal or area, prevents the adequate 


reconstruction of dose. 


So let's maybe talk about what we do have. So 


we do have bioassay data from all potential 


members of the class have uranium bioassay. 


External data for the class are available for 


whole body badge dose. Sandia National Lab did 


not do extremity monitoring till after 1990. 

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 Incident information includes a report -- let's 


see, shallow dose to the extremity was not 


recorded in the dose of record, and it was 


calculated from reports from the incident. 


So as part of this supplement I want to talk a 


little bit about what the bounding is. There 


is an extremely large -- the dose -- dose rate. 


Essentially, deterministic effects bound the 


dose. If you don't see blistering -- this is 


actually an X-- an X-ray diffraction accident 


that occurred and these are the deterministic 


effects that oc-- occurred after -- as a 


function of time. You see 24, day 30, 64, day 


98. This kind of X-ray dose rate causes 


extreme deterministic effects, and so that the 


external dose is bounded by these deterministic 


effects and doses in the range of 15 to 40 Grey 


result in reddening of the skin, skin des-- 


skin desquamation and blistering; that those 


effects were not observed and therefore 


deterministic effects would bound the dose. 


The report in some cases wasn't very clear on 


some of the calculations. I provided them, 


just to make it a little simpler on some of the 


math, where some of the numbers may have come 

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from but I won't belabor the issue here. The 


shallow dose came from a 1979 incident report, 


essentially 30 rads per 20 seconds. This was 


done at a lower power and a lower current, and 


so there are equations to scale that up to full 


power. The 1970 dose was for a full instrument 


done at 40 kilovolts and at 20 milliamps. So 


essentially the time that would be required is 


somewhere between the order of 32 seconds to 85 


seconds to produce this 15 Grey to 40 Grey 


exposure that would have resulted in 


deterministic effects. 


So we normalize the values. We took them from 


the measured re-- the measured results at the 


accident. We brought those up to full 


operating values. Those were in -- in R or 


exposure, and then they were converted to dose 


rates for the shallow dose and also deep dose. 


So what can we do? We actually can do --


evaluate the direct beam exposure to the organs 


via the diffracted dose. The dose is added 


annually to XRD aper-- operators in addition to 


the missed dose. Based on the measured beam 


exposure of the 1979 Sandia incident report and 


scaled up to full operational power, this 

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results in a direct beam dose on the order of 


1.96 times 10 to the 5th R per hour. That's 


the unit of exposure. 


Data show the diffracted dose is approximately 


3.3 times 10 to the minus 6 of the direct beam. 


Okay? This is diffracted off the sample as it 


comes to the shield. This is what you're going 


to see in your body. 


A health physics report written in the late -- 


in the early '70s actually measures the 


(unintelligible) instrument and what its 


diffracted dose is. We came up with about .65 


R per hour. That report determines something 


on the order of .35 R per hour, so our number 


is conservative, meaning it is higher than -- 


yes, sir? 


 DR. POSTON: Sam, I don't like numbers without 


units. What's the unit on the 3.3? Even 


though you said diffracted dose, I still need 


to know the units. 


 DR. GLOVER: That's just the -- it's a -- it's 


a fraction. This is diffracted dose relative 


to the direct beam dose, and they measured the 


diffracted measure and this is its relative 


value. It's just a ratio of -- of --

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78

 UNIDENTIFIED: (Unintelligible) 


 DR. POSTON: So it's not the diffracted dose. 


 DR. GLOVER: I'm sorry? 


DR. ROESSLER: It's not a dose. 


 MR. GRIFFON: The parentheses are the 


diffracted dose, the -- the (unintelligible). 


 DR. GLOVER: The direct beam dose is -- isn't ­

- is -- I expect the laser to be on the bottom 


part; this should be the trigger. This 3.3 


times 10 to the minus 6 times this results in a 


.65 R per hour number, and I apologize for not 


making that clear. 


All right. So we're -- I hit too many buttons 


at the same time, apparently. Maybe if I just 


do this. 


All right. One of these is -- again, this is a 


small beam so correction for time spent in the 


beam based on a 10 centimeters squared beam, 


upper front torso, approximately 25 percent of 


the sk-- the skin exposed, the total skin area 


is about 4,500 square centimeters. 


 Finally, exposure is multiplied by the organ 


dose correction factor, so that R value needs 


to be corrected to dose, so it's in Roentgens, 


now we need to come up with rem or millirem. 

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And also then, using a 50 percent occupancy 


factor, the instrument would have been used 


roughly half the 1,000 hours per year, to 


determine the organ dose. 


If you do that, you come up with around -- a 


lymphatic dose around .08 rem per year and a 


skin dose of about 1.25 rem per year, and the 


re port discusses other organs and I -- but 


they are very low and those are included in the 


addendum. 


Sorry about that, this... I don't know how to 


make it stop. Did it go away? All right. 


There's too many buttons -- too many options. 


I need better training. I need to be... 


All right, so it's -- uranium exposure can be 


reconstructed using actual bioassay data from 


missed dose and so that's a pretty well-


established discussion. I'm not going to 


belabor that. 


 External deep dose can be restructed (sic) from 


the reported dosimetry results. We're going to 


use that -- whatever reported dosimetry results 


would be -- in addition to the missed dose that 


would be occurred from that standard NIOSH 


practice. 

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The shallow dose can also be conre-- 


reconstructed based on the actual reported 


dosimetry, supplemented with what we talked 


about a little bit ago, and so this is just the 


-- if you had a shallow dose, we would still 


give you a missed dose for the -- for material 


that you would have -- that would have worked 


with. That's not going to include that 9 keV 


scattered X-ray. 


So in summary with that -- I want you -- that 


the internal source of exposure included the 


depleted uranium, the deep from mixed sources 


from the badge, the shallow dose that's badged, 


this assigned diffracted beam dose -- that 


missed dose that we talked about that -- if -- 


depending on the organ if it's the 1.25 rem per 


year or if it's a skin -- assigning extremity 


dose as appropriate. If you report that you 


were in an incident, then you would have an 


assigned extremity dose based on -- basically 


saying that you were part of this incident. 


There were no neutron sources that we're aware 


of. 


I don't want to belabor each of these. They're 


available to the Board. Basically we used a 

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consistent -- consistent with the previous set 


of dose reconstructions that were done, a male; 


date of birth, 1932; when -- the date of 


diagnosis and some -- varying the -- some of 


the different -- employment's determined, what 


is the effect of the addi-- additional dose. 


Essentially what we have is an XRD operator 


involved in the 1978 incident, cancer located 


in the beam during the incident -- located in 


the beam, and also the uranium bioassay. If 


it's a basal cell carcinoma on the hand, this 


is an underestimate using a very small fraction 


of the dose, you're going to exceed the 


probability of causation of 50 percent. 


 An XRD operator if the cancer's not located in 


the beam, uranium bioassay -- it's using a 


couple of different things -- of the lung, we 


received a 29.74 percent and a basal cell 


carcinoma on the chest around 30.51 percent. 


Obviously those change, depending on the exact 


circumstances that you would -- for of these 


dif-- these things, but just to try to give you 


a feel for what's going to go with the 


probability of causation. 


(Pause) 

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 Maybe that just times out. 


(Pause) 


NIOSH evaluated the petition using the 


guidelines established in 42 CFR 83.13. We 


issued a report March 29, 2007. This addendum 


report was issued on September 6, 2007. 


We evaluated whether it's feasible to estimate 


the level of radiation doses to individual 


members of the class with sufficient accuracy. 


Is there a reasonable likelihood that such a 


radiation dose may have endangered the class. 


NIOSH found that the available monitoring data, 


process descriptions and source term data are 


adequate to complete dose reconstructions with 


sufficient accuracy for the proposed class of 


employees; and a health endangerment 


determination is not required. 


So at this time we feel it's feasible to 


reconstruct dose for all sources of -- and I 


apologize for this. It was pointed out to me 


that I again -- this is -- this is not a -- 


this is my second time that I've done this -- 


I've left Fernald in the presentation and we 


have not caught it either time, but -- so that 


was brought to my attention and we do use a 

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83 

template and so I -- unfortunately, I left it 


in there twice. 


 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) The third time 


you get (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. GLOVER: The third time I get 


(unintelligible). 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. GLOVER: Additional documentation and 


sample dose reconstruction scenarios are 


available on the Advisory Board's review and 


the share drive located as said, so I 


appreciate your all's attention. I'll take any 


comments or questions. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you, Dr. Glover. 


Let's open the floor a moment here for 


questions or other comments, additional 


information needed. 


 (No responses) 


If not, we'll proceed -- oh, I'm sorry. Jim. 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, go ahead with the 


petitioner, then I'll -- I'll ask my question. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. So Dr. Giovacchini, if I'm 


pronouncing that correctly, are you on the line 


still? 

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84

 DR. WADE: Yes. Ask him to make his comment. 


 DR. ZIEMER: If you'll proceed with your 

comments. 

(Pause) 

 MR. GIOVACCHINI: Hello? Can the Board hear me 


now? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. Yes. 


(Pause) 


(NOTE: Upon review by the reporter of the 


recorded telephone comments, it appears there 


were breaks in the transmission which may have 


led to an inaccurate transcription of portions 


of the petitioner's statement.) 


 MR. GIOVACCHINI: Okay. I'm assuming I'm 


coming in loud and clear. I thank you very 


much for the presentation and your devoted work 


to acquire a dose reconstruction. My question 


to you is, is your dose reconstruction 


accurate? Is it precise? And is it exact in 


every detail, 'cause that's exactly what the 


SEC laws stipulate. 


I have three documents that I wanted the 


Advisory Board to be aware of -- two documents, 


and -- and I might be repeating some of the 


issues that you've already presented to the 

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85 

Board, but two of the documents support the 


fact that a dose reconstruction cannot be 


reconstructed to any degree of accuracy. 


Crucial exposure data is missing. And one of 


the documents from my oncologist supports a 


POC, a probability of causation, that my cancer 


stems from my ionizing radiation exposure. 


Now if the Board would like to hear these, I 


would be thrilled to share them with them, but 


I would first like to make a statement on my 


own -- my own behalf. 


Once again, my name is Gerald M. Giovacchini. 


I am the petitioner. This Special Exposure 


Cohort, SEC 00059, was filed for just three 


individuals that worked in the X-ray laboratory 


at Sandia, California. And bear with -- piece 


of the information that you already know. I 


just -- 18 years after first exposure, one of 


the individuals contacted (sic) one of the 22 


cancers specified by the SEC guidelines at the 


age of 30-- just 39 years old. This person 


contacted (sic) a chronic cancer. It -- that 


cancer is called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He 


contacted (sic) that disease five times over a 


(unintelligible)-year period and has received 

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86 

radiation, chemotherapy or a combination of the 


two five times. His oncologist has told him to 


expect additional tumors, followed by 


additional treatment, for the rest of his life. 


By the time he was 48 years old his job and his 


ability to support his family were taken away 


from him. He was considered 100 percent 


disabled by both Sandia Medical Department and 


Social Security. 


To date he has provided three affidavits from 


highly qualified individuals stating that it 


would not be feasible to reconstruct the dose 


to any degree of accuracy. Without exposure 


data, any dose reconstruction would be a guess 


and certainly invalid. He has also provided 


two letters from doctors and -- that clearly 


demonstrate a health endangerment from 


radioactive occupational exposures. This 


documentation supports a probability of 


causation linked to radioactive work exposures. 


 Yet another research report submitted into the 


record spells out the dangers of biological 


effects of ionizing radiation. That's the 


fourth research report recently report-- 


recently restudied confirms the link between 

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ionizing radiation and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, 


yet NIOSH contends that the dose can be bound, 


not to any degree of accuracy, as the law 


states. The Advisory Board contends that there 


was no health endangerment. 


At this point our understanding of our legal 


rights under the EEOICPA of 2000 allows us to 


make the two following requests: Appeal to the 


Advisory Board NIOSH's decision that they have 


accurately reconstructed dose; and two, we 


appeal to the Presidential Advisory Board and 


their technical consultant, Sandy Cohen & 


Associates, to audit the NIOSH 


(unintelligible). 


This letter represents the written appeal of 


the class. The following paragraphs 


demonstrate in greater detail the underlying 


facts that substantiate these appeals. This 


letter and the following 18 exhibits form the 


basis of our appeal. Therewith -- with this S­

- when this SEC was submitted according to 


criteria in 42 CFR Part 83 clearly states (a) 


it is not feasible to estimate with sufficient 


accuracy the radiation dose that the class 


received; and (b) there is a reasonable 

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likelihood that such radiation dose endangered 


the health of members of the class. These two 


issues will be discussed separately, with 


emphasis on the words "accuracy" and 


"reasonable," as this is how the EEOICPA law 


was written. 


Continuing on, part A says it is not feasible 


to estimate with sufficient accuracy the 


radiation dose that the class received. The 


class believes a dose reconstruction be 


reconstructed because intent of the law states 


that it must be performed accurately. Please 


keep in mind that accurate means exact or 


precise. SEC was filed because all exposures, 


daily and accidental, went -- monitored, 


unrecorded and/or inaccurately reported. 


Submitted criteria is as follows. Therewith I 


am repeating some of what you already know. 


 The class consists of three members. Two, 


exposures to ionizing radiation were incurred 


on a daily basis. Three, personal monitoring 


records for one class member is missing. Four, 


two members of the class incurred an actual 


elevated exposure. Five, the incident report 


for one member of the class -- including 

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medical reports, after his incident. The 


actual exposures were over and above the daily 


exposures that routinely occurred. And seven, 


the dosimeters were worn during the exposure 


periods. Eight, inadequate shielding was 


utilized. Nine, radioactive and toxic 


materials were analyzed. Ten, the location of 


the tiny dosimeter chip in relation to the X-


ray exposure was either totally blocked or 


filtered from the X-ray beam. Eleven, finger 


rings (break in transmission) by Sandia. They 


saw no need. Sandia also did not see a need 


for area monitors. The type of radiation 


produced by these X-ray (unintelligible) was 


highly collimated. Please also keep in mind, 


and this is very important, when speaking of 


one member of the class, that member represents 


33.3 percent of the class; therefore 33.3 


percent of the exposure data for this class is 


missing and is not available to include in any 


type of calculation. Three notarized 


affidavits from qualified (break in 


transmission) report these circumstances, yet 


NIOSH insists that a dose reconstruction can be 


accurately calculated. And this is Exhibit 1 

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I'd like to present of the appeal, that 


scientific facts were blatantly suppressed and 


ignored in light of our supporting evidence. 


I would also like to inform the Advisory Board 


that two individuals confirm my elevated 


(unintelligible) accidents or exposure in their 


affidavit. Please do not refer to my accident 


as being alleged. It happened. It's been 


verified. That is Exhibit 2, the accidental 


elevated exposure of Gerald M. Giovacchini -- 


that is myself -- has not been alleged. 


In addition I would also like to inform the 


Advisory Board that the affidavit of one 


individual states a comment that he received 


from health and safety department at the 


Sandia, California site. This comment is: You 


work with X-rays; that's your job; you ought to 


be willing to take your turn in the barrel. 


Well, a comment of this nature clearly 


testifies that daily ionizing radiation 


exposures were incurred. 


And this leads me up to Exhibit 3. The class 


would like to submit the fact that daily 


ionization exposures were inevitable and un-- 


unknown. The exposures cannot be accurately 

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quantified because the element of exposure time 


cannot be determined. We don't know how long 


the exposure time is and because of the daily 


ac-- daily exposures. 


In the addendum evaluation report dated 


September 6, 2007 (break in transmission) 


contends that the dose can be bound by 


researching characteristics and parameters, 


without taking into account the amount of time 


a class -- exposed. 


This leads me up to Exhibit 4. I would like to 


submit into the record that without knowing the 


amount of time an individual was exposed, 


either the daily or (break in transmission) 


exposures, dose reconstruction calculation 


lacks crucial data. When exact dose exposure 


time cannot be accounted for, the 


reconstruction would be an invalid calculation. 


The law specifies an accurate dose 


reconstruction, one that is precise in every 


detail. Please keep that in mind. 


I'm on a -- got a little bit more to read, so 


bear with (break in transmission). 


 The class would also like to stress the fact 


that when exposure data is missing for one 

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member of the class, it represents 33.3 percent 


of the data. Only 66 percent of the exposure 


data is available for NIOSH to calculate a 


dose. 


This leads me up to Exhibit 5 of the appeal. 


This further demonstrates that sufficient 


information is missing from which a dose 


reconstruction can be calculated to any degree 


of accuracy. The dose reconstruction would be 


baseless and unfounded, as stated in the 


affidavit. 


 The original evaluation report that the class 


received on March 30th, 2007 clearly stated 


that assumptions, estimations and correction 


factors were utilized. 


This leads up to Exhibit 6. How accurate in 


every detail, how precise, how (break in 


transmission) can the dose be (break in 


transmission) postulated and unsubstantiated 


data. The class strongly objected to this 


methology (sic) and when it was challenged the 


NIOSH responded three months later with an 


interim evaluation report stating that they now 


use an alternative method to bound the dose. 


The class senses a lack of pride in NIOSH's 

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decision when utilizing their original 


approach. 


Exhibit 7 specifies the class to know why NIOSH 


(break in transmission) only to relent on it 


when it was challenged. The class believes 


NIOSH again to fail to follow the intent of the 


law. The class would like to see a scientific 


reasoning approach, as Congress intended. 


One issue that was not included in the 


evaluation report was brought to my attention 


by Laurie Breyer on September 24th when she 


informed me that tritium bioassay exposure 


records were retrieved by one of the health 


physicists doing the dose reconstruction. At 


first I was a little confused and not sure why 


tritium exposure pertained to the years I 


worked in the X-ray lab. But after careful 


consideration, I do remember working eight 


hours per week overtime for a two-year period 


in the tritium research laborat-- (break in 


transmission) [Name Redacted]*. I believe time 


frame was 1975 to 1977, but I do pay stubs to 


verify the (break in transmission) frame when 


the time comes. 


I apologize for not remembering, but this leads 

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I 

me up to (break in transmission) eight. I am 


requesting that radioactive tritium exposures 


(break in transmission) into the (break in 


transmission) reconstruction record. 


requested this bioassay data from Dave Sundin 


on September (break in transmission) 2007. At 


this point we (break in transmission) if it 


relates to the 1975-1977 time frame or 


exposures that count to even more 


(unintelligible) lost data. 


On June 7, 2007 I had an extensive conference 


call with four individuals identifying 


themselves as Pat T., Joe G., Elsie T., Dan S., 


and that is all I know of these individuals. 


find this particularly disturbing for two 


reasons. Reason number one, conflict of 


interest. To avoid the potential for actual or 


perceived conflict of interest, a class has the 


right to written conflict of interest 


statements. 


Exhibit 9, the class is requesting these 


conflict of interest statements. 


And the second reason pertains to the 


qualification of the individuals processing the 


claims. During the interviews the discussion 


I 
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was focused upon my (unintelligible) elevated 


exposure to my right hand and fingers. One of 


the individuals asked if the Sandia health 


physicist investigating the incident held a 


Geiger counter up to my exposed hand and 


fingers to record a reading. (Break in 


transmission) and responded by asking one of 


the other interviewers to answer the question. 


The response from that individual was a Geiger 


counter would not show a reading. This comment 


by one of the interviewers is especially 


troublesome as -- and is an insult to me. This 


comment makes a statement regarding the lack of 


qualifications of the individuals supposed to 


be performing a fair and uniform dose 


reconstruction attempt. When I enlist a 


doctor, a coworker, for an affidavit I am 


required to obtain notarized documents. I also 


(break in transmission) DOL knows the 


qualifications of the individuals out of 


respect for the class and especially the sick 


applicants and NIOSH show the same courtesy. 


And this leads me to Exhibit 10. The class 


would like to point out that this further 


reinforces the fact that not having qualified 

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individuals processing claims (break in 


transmission) of the dose is strongly in 


question and is more likely going to be 


inaccurate and flawed. 


We go to part (b) where it states that there is 


a reasonable likelihood that such (break in 


transmission) in dose may have endangered the 


health of members of the class. This class 


believes the health of one member was 


endangered because the intent of the law 


states, and I quote, there is a reasonable 


likelihood. 


This SEC was also filed because there is an 


obvious health endangerment. That'd be myself. 


Be informed that I have contacted (sic) one of 


the two specified cancers, non-Hodgkin's 


lymphoma. 


This leads me up to Exhibit 11 of the appeal. 


The term "specified cancer" is defined in the 


SEC criteria for eligibility. I quote directly 


from the SEC law a -- these having been 


acquired in the performance of duty while 


exposed to ionizing radiation. The facts speak 


for themselves. 


The following three documents have previously 

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been submitted into my medical records but are 


highlighted here to clearly demonstrate the 


link between my radioactive work exposure and 


my disease. Dr. (unintelligible) stated that 


Mr. (unintelligible) -- and I quote, I'm not 


making this up -- stated that Mr. Giovacchini's 


non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was more likely than not 


related to his radioactive work exposures at 


Sandia, California. And two, the second 


doctor, [Name Redacted], states that lymphoma 


has been linked to occupation exposures to 


ionizing radiation. [Name Redacted] further 


states that Mr. Giovacchini's most recent 


cancer was clearly distinct from his initial 


lymphoma, which was (unintelligible) and not 


nodular, rather than diffuse and clearly 


distinct in (break in transmission). He 


further identifies the link between lymphomas 


and ionizing radiation. He supports the fact 


that distinctly different cancers suggests a 


second primary cancer. 


 The third document that relates to health 


endangerment to work exposures is biological 


effects of ionizing radiation. This is a 


reference that I've used. BEIR VII illustrates 

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that no dose is only -- is the only safe dose. 


This is available on the Internet. I'm sure 


we're all aware of that. 


This supporting documentation was recent 


retrieved and has not been sent to NIOSH for 


inclusion in the amended evaluation report. 


This information is from the Collaborative on 


Health and the Environment. They are called 


the CHE. The CHE report is a toxicant and 


disease database that pertains to non-Hodgkin's 


lymphoma and how strong the link is to various 


causes. Please be informed that ionizing 


radiation raised a (unintelligible). 


Exhibit 12 so states the evidence presented 


supports the fact that there is a reasonable 


likelihood that such radiation endangered the 


health of one member of the class. These 


supporting facts are from reliable and 


trustworthy sources. I am requesting that this 


supporting documentation be factored into my 


medical record as proof that supports a 


probability of causation link into the -- to 


the radiological work exposures that I 


incurred. 


Moving on, I'd like to say a little bit more. 

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We already established that I have had nonHodgkin's lymphoma five times. The NIOSH 


report that previ-- previous (unintelligible) 


submitted into the record. [Name Redacted] 


confirms my lymphoma sites are extremely rare. 


Keep this in mind. Lymphoma doesn't usually 


occur at the sites (break in transmission) 


occurred. All of my ionizing radiation 


exposures from working in this lab have been to 


the upper trunk of my body and most (break in 


transmission) side as I am right (break in 


transmission). Aligning my lymphoma sites to 


my exposure area, there appears to be a 


striking similarity. I do believe this (break 


in transmission) more than a (break in 


transmission) mere coincidence, especially 


after five (break in transmission). 


Exhibit 13 of our appeal, I would like to 


submit this medical information into my file as 


supporting a health endangerment and a 


probability about -- of causation that my 


lymphoma is related to my work exposures. 


I'd like to say a little (break in 


transmission). Hopefully everyone (break in 


transmission) still hear me. 

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Now it has been established that the type of 


ionizing radiation that was utilized in this X-


ray lab (break in transmission) highly 


collimated. It would therefore strike smaller 


targets, mainly (break in transmission) of the 


body. It is not a broad X-ray beam like the 


medical X-ray. It stands to reason that it 


wouldn't be likely for this type of radiation 


to strike a tiny target like a dos-- tiny 


dosimeter chip head-on. However, I did wear a 


dosimeter for the unlikely incident. 


Unfortunately, most of the time the dosimeter 


was worn behind the security badge or at the 


waistline, in which case it was either filtered 


or totally blocked. The evaluation report 


states that the dosimeter and security badge 


was all one. That may have been true for the 


current employees, but that was not the case 


during the tenure of the class. 


Exhibit 14, I'd like to state that the class 


(break in transmission) to (break in 


transmission) the statement amended. The class 


would also like to point out that this argument 


substantiates an inaccuracy of monitoring of 


external exposures to the upper torso, head and 

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neck when the dosimeter is filtered, blocked or 


not pointed (break in transmission) toward the 


approaching beam. This practice resulted in 


exposures that were unmonitored, inadequately 


reported. 


 One additional point that I would like to 


(break in transmission) of the Advisory Board 


is the Sandia, California site profile, and 


this is very important. The evaluation report 


refers to the -- the amended evaluation report 


refers to the profile (break in transmission) 


circumstances. NIOSH has acknowledged that all 


of the exposure data for one member of the 


class is missing. It stands to reason that if 


this data is missing, then it wouldn't be 


included in the profile. Why access the site 


profile. 


Exhibit 15 (break in transmission) of the 


appeal, it is not a (break in transmission) 


fair practice as the law so states to refer to 


the document that doesn't contain the exposure 


(break in transmission) question. Furthermore, 


it is (break in transmission) fair practice to 


utilize exposure data of another individual to 


determine exposure of another individual. My 

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job duties may have been similar, but not 


performed to the same degree as my successor. 


During my tenure in this X-ray laboratory I 


utilized the X-ray machines (break in 


transmission) often and for longer periods of 


(break in transmission). 


Exhibit 16, I mention this because if my 


workload was greater it stands to reason that 


my exposures would have been greater. Once 


again, sufficient information (break in 


transmission) lacking to find a precise dose. 


 (Break in transmission) I am currently working 


(break in transmission) and many other Sandia 


retirees to bring the Sandia, California site 


profile up to date so that it will accurately 


reflect the working conditions (break in 


transmission) that I can (break in 


transmission). 


Exhibit 17, the class is requesting that this 


document be given adequate time to be reviewed, 


updated and not be referenced until former 


employees are given the right to update its 


contents. After all, it was these former 


employees like myself (break in transmission) 


the environment in which they worked. 

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Referencing data from an inaccurate, incomplete 


document would unfairly judge a sick 


applicant's dose exposure and medical condition 


and ultimately jeopardize his or her EEOICPA 


claim. 


Now we are all aware that the Advisory Board's 


expert (break in transmission) -- and I didn't 


put these words in. I'm just quoting them from 


the information I received. We are all aware 


that the Advisory Board's expert contractor, 


San-- Sanford Cohen & Associates, has 


identified many concerns with NIOSH's 


approaches. Specifically, SC&A stated that it 


has concern over NIOSH's ability to implement 


the stated methods, approaches and coworker 


models to enable dose reconstruction with 


sufficient accuracy as provided in 42 CFR Part 


83. Even Shelby Hallmark, the DOL (break in 


transmission) Assistant Secretary for the 


Office of Workers Compensation, publicly 


criticized the validity of dose 


reconstructions. Mr. Shelby (sic) is concerned 


that with the development of new coworker 


models, added adjustment factors, creation of 


new technical guidance documents, et cetera, 

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the EEOICPA process has gotten far too 


convoluted to allow accurate dose 


reconstruction. The Associated Press cited 


strategies by adjusting a -- ajucating (sic) 


agencies to contain the grown and benefits 


under the EEOICPA program. More pointed 


critism (sic) comes from our elected officials. 


For example, Representative John Hostettler, 


Indiana, at the December hearing of the House 


Committee on Immigration and Border Security 


(unintelligible) cited memos and e-mails 


showing that DOL (break in transmission) 


pressuring NIOSH to limit claims. Now 


Congressman Tom Udall stated that the agencies 


appeared to have assembled small bureaucratic 


empires, spending millions to devise a maze of 


regulations that ensure that hundreds of people 


enjoy (unintelligible) and prosperous career 


administering the pro-- this program. And 


there are more comments from high-ranking 


officials regarding the validity of the 


program. Rest assured I did not make these 


comments (break in transmission) and do not 


want to stoop to this level to prove my point, 


but it is this type of correspondent that 

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reinforces the fact that dose reconstructions 


are being improperly computed. No wonder sick 


applicants are stating appeal after appeal and 


seeking legal (break in transmission) 


assistance. At what point will Congress 


recognize the fact that administrative costs 


vers-- versus the benefits are way out of 


proportion. 


 Please hold on one second. 


(Pause) 


Okay, I'd like to continue. I'm almost done. 


Bear with me. Thank you for listening. 


 Sick claimants represent a class of people who 


have put their lives on the line during their 


employment at nuclear facilities throughout the 


United States. These people jeopardized their 


health and safety while being exposed to 


radioactive and toxic substances so that the 


United States could research, fabricate and 


maintain their nuclear deterrent. I was part 


of that. I am proud of that. These sick 


applicants performed the job that was asked of 


them. They worked in these laboratories for 


their families, their coworkers, their friends, 


and all who enjoy the freedom of living in the 

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United States. For all those listening, this 


includes you, too. Some are grateful; some 


take their freedom for granted. And then you 


have some, namely those individuals response 


for ajucating (sic) worker claims, instead of 


supporting the individual who become ill after 


working in nuclear (unintelligible) are 


choosing to make it extremely difficult for 


these sick applicants or their survivors to 


obtain the benefits they rightly deserve. 


 Numerous people who are aware of my medical 


condition, including some former supervisors, 


have all asked me three simple questions. Do 


you think your illness was caused from your 


radioactive work exposure? Two, if you had to 


do it over again, would you still work in the 


nuclear industry? Three, knowing what you know 


now about your exposures, do you think that 


your radioactive exposures could have been 


prevented? 


I would like to answer these three because I 


get these questions all the time. Question 


number one, do you think your illness was 


caused from your radioactive work exposures? 


The EEOICPA program has placed the burden of 

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proof on the sick applicant. I personally have 


done my research and I obtained the supporting 


documentation from coworkers, doctors, et 


cetera, and presented the facts supporting the 


Congressional intent of an SEC. Yes, I am 


confident my disease stems from my radioactive 


work exposures. 


 Question number two, if you had to do it over 


again, would you still work in the nuclear 


industry? Let me answer this by saying, you 


know, I raised children and now I have 


grandchildren. I get all choked up here, 


sorry. Excuse me. My parents raised me. 


Their parents raised them. Our ancestors --


hold on one second, please. 


(Pause) 


Our ancestors were willing to take a stand. 


They would stand up and fight. Whether they 


fall in the battlefield or in the laboratory, 


they backed the good old -- they backed the 


good old USA and what it stood for. I am 


thankful that our ancestors preserved and paved 


the way for all of us and those yet to come. 


The answer to this question is definitely yes, 


I would in the nuclear industry again. 

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Former Sandia employees won their battle in the 


laboratory. They are extremely proud of their 


accomplishments, and that is something no one 


can strip them of. Regrettably, many are 


currently sick, like myself, and many have 


died. Whether the ajucating (sic) agencies 


listen to scientific reason now or later, those 


sick applicants that are confident that their 


illnesses were attributed to their work 


exposures will continue to appeal their EEOICPA 


claims until the ajucating (sic) agencies 


process these claims as Congress and the 


President intended. Until that happens, we as 


a nation are stripping ourselves of our 


integrity. In the opinion of this working 


class, and I'm sure other SEC classes would 


agree, it is vitally important that ajucating 


(sic) agencies and sick applicants and/or their 


families all play this game by the same set of 


rules. I do not believe we are playing by the 


same set of rules. 


 And the third question, knowing what you know 


now about your exposures, do you think that 


your radioactive exposures could have been 


prevented? Without a doubt, I would answer 

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this question yes. If I had worked in another 


(break in transmission) laboratory, the chances 


of being exposed to the degree I was exposed 


would have been significant reduced. To do it 


over again today, I wouldn't have been exposed 


to the degree that I was back in the Cold War 


era, the reason being nuclear workers these 


days are protected by much stricter and (break 


in transmission) exposure guidelines. If these 


guidelines of the Cold War years were adequate, 


why were they changed? 


One health physicist recently told me, by 


today's standards, the exposures in those days 


would have been sufficient to set the stage for 


health endangerment. 


This leads me to the last exhibit, number 18. 


I'm requesting that this statement be submitted 


to my dose re-- exposure record. If you want 


his notarized affidavit and qualification, I'll 


be happy and delighted to submit his statement 


into the record also. 


In summary, the facts supporting the 


Congressional intent of SEC 00059 have been 


presented to NIOSH and now the Advisory Board 


knows them as well. 

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Four things that I know for sure. Number one, 


I have a chronic type of cancer, non-Hodgkin's 


lymphoma. 


I am confident -- number two, I am confident my 


non-Hodgkin's lymphoma stems from my 


radioactive work exposures. 


Number three, this petition is valid. The 


evidence presented adequately supports SEC 


00059. 


And number four, I do not agree with the 


conclusion of NIOSH that they can perform a 


dose reconstruction to any degree of accuracy 


based on all of the above that I have 


mentioned. 


Finally, please be informed I am sick and I am 


dying, and right now I feel pretty stupid that 


I even contacted (sic) cancer. But I would 


feel even more stupid if I did not set the 


record straight before I move on to meet my 


Maker. At my graveside I want it said that 


Gerry was a good husband, a good father, and 


someone who took a stand for principle to right 


a wrong. 


I worked under government contracts for 20 


years. To the best of my ability, I was a good 

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steward of taxpayers' money. I'm extremely 


proud of my tenure at Sandia. If the ajucating 


(sic) agencies had acquired precise exposure 


details and processed my claims, Part E, Part B 


and this SEC, with honesty, integrity and the 


respect for the individual, I would have 


accepted that. The Advisory Board now has in 


its power to take a first step and tell 


Congress (break in transmission) an injustice. 


We must amend this program and right this 


wrong. Hopefully the nine people who are on 


the distribution list of this letter will take 


action and contribute, to the best of their 


ability, to res-- resolve the inequities of 


this program. 


I am personally loca-- looking forward to 


resolving this matter without too much more 


time and expense. Please note, though, that 


there are other inaccurate statements within 


the addendum evaluation report that I would 


like to correct for the record. These 


additional corrections could very well have an 


impact -- a positive impact on the SEC. These 


will be formulated and mailed as soon as I have 


a chance to update them. 

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Thank you to everyone for allowing me the time 


to, one, request an appeal to NIOSH decision 


that they have accurately reconstructed the 


dose. And two, request an audit of NIOSH 


methology (sic). On behalf of the working 


class and all sick applicants, this is Gerald 


Giovacchini. Thank you all for listening. If 


you have any questions, I will state them. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, Gerald. We 


know it was very difficult for you to relate 


some of that information and we appreciate your 


input. 


Board members, it is now the lunch hour. I 


think we do need to go ahead and take our 


break, and following the break we will have a 


discussion of this petition and determine a 


path forward on it. But let's take -- we have 


an hour for lunch. Actually the time is 


squeezing past us already, but get back as 


quickly as you can and we'll try to reconvene 


as close to 1:15 as we can. Thank you very 


much. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 12:23 p.m. 


to 1:40 p.m.) 


 DR. ZIEMER: We're ready to reconvene. Just 

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prior to the lunch break we had heard from the 


SEC petitioner for the Sandia petition which 


involves the X-ray diffraction workers. Board 


members, this SEC petition and the evaluation 


report now are open for discussion and/or for 


any appropriate motions. 


Josie. 


MS. BEACH: I have an ap-- I have a question 


for Sam on the urinalysis data. Was that done 


in-house or by an outside laboratory? 


 DR. GLOVER: It would depend on the time frame. 


I believe those were in-house data, but I 


couldn't give you a clear answer. I don't 


think that was out-- out-sourced. 


MS. BEACH: Okay. 


 DR. GLOVER: But I don't know off -- I can't 


give you the date. 


MS. BEACH: Can you -- can you let me know if 


it was out-sourced, though, at some other time? 


 DR. GLOVER: Sure. 


MS. BEACH: And the reason I'm asking is the 


question for the S-- or the CEP labs. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. GLOVER: No, that's outside that scope. 

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MS. BEACH: It is outside? Thank you. 


 DR. GLOVER: And this is Sandia Livermore, not 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. GLOVER: -- versus Sandia Albuquerque. 


MS. BEACH: It wasn't clear in the documents I 


read so I was --


 DR. GLOVER: Okay. Sorry about that. 

MS. BEACH: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Further comments? Yes, Jim 

Melius. 

 DR. MELIUS: I -- I have a question. Have we 

received the information that the petitioner 


referred to in his phone call? He referred to 


a letter and a number of appendices, and... 


 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I don't think that I've seen 


the material that he's referred to. I'm not 


sure, Sam, even whether you have -- or LaVon, 


can anyone help us out? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I -- I don't believe we've 


re-- we've received a package that he's 


identified, no. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Is this -- somebody help me out on 


-- sort of in terms of the rules of engagement. 


Normally is the petitioner allowed to submit 

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supplementary information after the ER, or -- 


or... I'm sort of asking whether we're 


obligated to wait for such information. 
I 


don't think under the rules that that's 


permitted, but --


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I -- I -- I don't know what 


the rules are, but certainly our practice has 


been --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I know --


 DR. MELIUS: -- and that -- since some of 


that's always -- actually som-- some of the 


information today was in response to, you know, 


a new report -- an addendum report from NIOSH, 


I mean I don't think there'd be an issue with 


it. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I'm not going to say 


anything about what Dr. Melius said, but I 


think what the rule says is -- and I agree with 


what Dr. Melius said, we haven't exactly 


followed that -- the rule -- and our legal team 


can correct me if I'm wrong. The rule says 


once that a petition has been submitted to the 


Board, if the person wants to provide new 


information, that would be provided in a new 


petition. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: I -- I guess one of the questions 


is is the petitioner allowed to provide 


information in response to the ER itself. 
I 


think probably we have allowed that, just as we 


have allowed additional input from -- from 


NIOSH and from the contractor. So I'm not 


sure, in terms of the strict interpretation of 


the rule; but in general we've been fairly 


flexible on that. I think we leave it to the 


Board whether you want to see those exhibitions 


(sic). And if so, that would require delaying 


action on this. Or do you feel you have 


sufficient information now? 


NIOSH has indicated that -- that they can bound 


this dose with sufficient accuracy. The 


claimant doesn't agree with that, apparently. 


So what is -- what is your pleasure? 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I mean I'll -- I mean -- if 


I understand your question, Dr. Ziemer -- I 


mean I would certainly like to see the 


information and be ab-- be able to review it if 


it's -- you know. And I believe it --


petitioner said he would make it available to 


us. I thought he had, that's why I was asking. 


I thought maybe it -- something had come in and 

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(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm not aware that we have it, so 


-- I've certainly not seen it. NIOSH 


apparently has not seen it. Certainly as a 


courtesy to the petitioner, why, we can delay 


action if you so wish. 


 DR. GLOVER: Just to be clear, in -- in the 


report I -- you know, there was a series of -- 


he provided additional information back in 


April 25th, and then immediately before the 


Board meeting he provided information in the 


conference call and additional affidavit last 


week that -- they were all taken into 


consideration as part of this. I believe this 


is all new information -- or not new, 


necessarily, but a separate packet that he's 


prepared in response to this supplement ER 


report. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah -- yeah, I was trying to 


figure this out as he was speaking and -- and I 


believe some of that -- most -- mu-- much of 


what he's referring to was in -- though some 


referred -- he did refer back to some earlier 


stuff that I think you had considered. And one 


reason I wanted to see it was I was confused by 

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some of the -- what was new, what was old and ­

- and make sure we understood the points 


(unintelligible). 


 DR. WADE: I do think, from my perspective, 


this Board has always operated on the premise 


that it wants to have all of the information in 


its possession and that it wants to make the 


appropriate decision. So I don't know that 


waiting for information is necessarily at all 


out of character for this Board. Whether or 


not you think that information would sway you 


or not, that's a judgment you can each make. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So appropriate actions, one motion 


would be to defer action until the material has 


been received and we have a chance to review 


it. Another possibility would be to make a 


motion either to accept the NIOSH 


recommendation or a motion to reject it, and -- 


there's three possibilities there. So the 


Chair's open to some sort of motion to get 


things moving. 


Phil, do you wish to make a motion? 


 MR. SCHOFIELD: Yes, I do. I'd like to make a 


motion that we postpone a decision on this 


until we do see -- receive the documents from 

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the claimants. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, is there a second to that 

motion? 

 DR. POSTON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: The motion's open for discussion. 

Okay, Dr. Melius. 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, this -- I'm not -- this may 


be out of order, but the question I also have 


that's related to that is do we want to ask 


SC&A to review some of this information. I 


would -- we do have a category called a 


targeted review, and I think there are a few 


issues that could be addressed that would not 


require a lot of time, though frankly, some of 


that would -- may depend on some -- what those 


issues are may depend on us seeing this 


submission from him. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let me partially respond to that. 


I -- I think we also have to be cognizant of 


the use of resources in terms of -- this, in 


effect, is a one-person petition, and I'm a 


little concerned about how much resources we 


spend on a one-person petition. Not that it's 


not an important petition, but as opposed to a 


-- you know, a group of several hundred 

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petitioners where the level of effort from the 


contractor may be relatively substantial. 


 Let's hear from others. Wanda? 


 MS. MUNN: We've had a significant amount of 


information provided to us, both by the 


petitioner and by NIOSH. It does not seem 


reasonable that this Board would need to 


involve our contractor further in investigating 


what we have already seen and what is certainly 


going to be well-covered by our postponement in 


order to review the additional information the 


petitioner has asked. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments? 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim? 

 DR. MELIUS: I guess I'm -- I'm very leery, Dr. 


Ziemer, of using a cost-benefit analysis to 


apply this. I mean I -- and I'll actually -- 


think that NIOSH did an excellent job of, you 


know, putting an appropriate amount of 


resources into this. They -- they've done two 


-- two reports now and -- I mean I -- it's a 


fact there's three -- we have another petition 


coming up that we -- covers one person or 


something and -- difficult. But at the same 

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time, if there are, you know, valid technical 


issues that -- that need to be addressed, then 


I -- I think they should be addressed 


regardless of the numbers of people involved. 


Does that mean that we spend millions and 


millions of dollars? No. But -- which is why 


I suggested they partially -- suggest a focused 


review as -- as a possibility. I'm -- again, 


I'm not sure we're ready to make that decision 


now nor to know what to focus on now 'cause I ­

- I would -- personally would like to see the ­

- while -- what's been -- will be submitted 


from the petitioner, but I think we just need ­

- a little bit careful of using the cost of 


something as being the -- the driving force 


here. 


And I would also add that I don't think that 


Congress intends us to, you know, have some 


ceiling as to whether -- where we would -- in 


terms of the use of our contractor to do -- do 


technical reviews. And if we -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well --


 DR. MELIUS: -- if there's not enough money, 


then we should be asking for more. We should 


not be trying to ration this amount out. It 

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does not mean we don't use that resource 


appropriately and wisely, but... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, one of the -- let me 


indicate that I don't disagree with that. 


However, I was cautioning us that we do 


nonetheless have to be cognizant of the 


judicial use of our resources. They are not 


unlimited, and I was simply cautioning the 


Board to take that into consideration. When I 


said the fact that it was one person does not 


make it unimportant, I was hoping to convey 


that part of the message. But nonetheless to 


be cognizant that we at the same time have a -- 


and it's not necessarily a money resource. We 


have some -- also time constraints for our 


contractor which, in many respects, are equally 


as important. So I simply caution the Board to 


be cognizant of those constraints 'cause 


neither the time nor the money is unlimited. 


If we -- if we decide that this is worth 


pursuing, I don't object to that at all. I 


just want us to be -- on any of these, whether 


it's one person or 500 -- to make sure that we 


actually need the assistance of the contractor 


before we make -- or task them to do that. And 

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you may be right, we may want to see these 


documents first and then make the decision at 


that point. I'm certainly personally a little 


reluctant to make such an assignment without 


having some idea of what -- well, we have an 


idea of what's in these documents -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- but it's a little vague without 


having them. Okay. So I don't think we're in 


basic disagreement there, I -- 


 DR. MELIUS: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- just want us to -- not to 


approach these things as if things are 


unlimited, either in time or resources. Yes, 


we'd like to have more resources and more time, 


and probably more people. 


 Okay, Wanda. 


 MS. MUNN: Because this particular petition 


addresses, in many ways, an entirely different 


set of circumstances than what we work with 


usually, it's clear to me that the agency has 


spent a great deal of focused energy on 


identifying what the salient points are in the 


petition and has tried to outline those to us, 


I think very well. I continue to feel that we 

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have a good explanation of what's in the 


documents and where NIOSH can go with those. 


Certainly reviewing the petitioner's documents 


is well within our purview and will be 


appreciated. The information that we've 


received seems to be clearly adequate -- should 


be for most --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, are you speaking against the 


motion to postpone to get the documents from 


the petitioner? 


 MS. MUNN: No --


 DR. ZIEMER: No? 


 MS. MUNN: -- I'm not. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Just cautioning us about what 


happens after that, perhaps. 


 Any others, pro or con? The motion before us 


is to postpone action until we have a chance to 


review the petitioner's additional documents, 


as described in his presentation. 


Yes? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I'll -- I'll speak in -- in 


support of the motion, but I -- I just wanted a 


clarification -- I see one -- one case affected 


by this petition, but I thought I heard three 


and I'm -- I'm -- I'm -- maybe I'm confused as 

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to -- somebody could help me out there. 


 DR. GLOVER: There are -- I have -- one thing I 


-- this -- as we get to the oneness and 


singularity, we begin to be careful about 


Privacy Act stuff --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. GLOVER: -- and so I have to be careful on 


what we -- and how I couch presentation 


materials, and I did want to caution the Board 


as we review data, many of the things that he 


spoke to were discussions about his particular 


experiences and the singularity of his 


experience. And so --


 MR. GRIFFON: But (unintelligible) --


 DR. GLOVER: -- it does -- well, the class is 


three people who operated the X-ray diffraction 


equipment and X-ray fluorescence in those 


areas. They were in a later time frame, some 


of the other people, and so there are numerous 


 DR. ZIEMER: Potentially there are three 


individuals in the class. Is that what I'm 


hearing? 


 DR. GLOVER: But not who were part of the 


incidents involved as stated. I try to be 

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generic --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. GLOVER: -- in this. 


 MR. GRIFFON: And then -- and then as I'm 


looking at the uranium urinalysis, then -- then 


that -- obviously the -- the raw results that 


I'm pulling up here in the reference that you 


had in your evaluation report includes uranium 


data from various areas, obviously, 'cause 


there's more than three people. There's --


there's ten -- at least tens of people that are 


covered in there, and I think it looks more 


like 40 or 50, you know, people in the uranium 


urinalysis raw data. 


 DR. GLOVER: Well, for this partic-- you're -- 


all the data from the class -- we have uranium 


data for all members of the class. Those were 


not specific to -- in the individual person. 


All data was less than the MDA. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. GLOVER: I think I can -- so -- but that -- 


not (unintelligible) one person's data. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Again, we're trying to be very 


careful here and protect the privacy of an 


individual, but I believe that this -- this 

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petitioner had time outside of this class 


definition. Is that correct, Sam? 


 DR. GLOVER: Yes. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: And so that urinalysis applies to 


other employment and exposure experience that 


he had. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. But -- I -- I guess what 


I'm getting at is -- and -- and understanding 


the class, there's a -- a reference in the 


evaluation report that -- I think it's -- 


anyway, it's one of your last on your reference 


list, uranium bioassay results, '65 through '90 


or something like that. Clearly, when I look 


through all that raw data -- I don't know that 


you've put this in any kind of spreadsheet 


format, but when I glance through it, there's a 


lot of -- a lot of -- more than three and 


probably, like I said, 40 or 50 individuals. 


But they wouldn't have been in this particular 


facility. Right? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Were not in that X-ray 


diffraction unit. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. Okay. 

 MR. ELLIOTT: That's -- that's the distinction 

--
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 MR. GRIFFON: So you -- you didn't parse that 


document out to support this evaluation re-- 


right? All right. I -- I think I understand 


now. It's broader than just that facility. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: These are --


 MR. GRIFFON: When I glanced at it, I -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: We do individual dose 


reconstructions that are based upon the 


circumstances of experience and exposure that 


an individual had. And so when we start 


talking about a --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- singular class member, that's 


where we get -- that's where it leads us to 


talking about those circumstances, and that 


becomes very difficult in a public forum 


because of the Privacy Act. So I think you've 


got it. I think you understand that the 


uranium urinalysis is representative of 


exposure outside of the class definition. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 DR. MELIUS: I --

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 DR. ZIEMER: Another comment, Jim? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yea-- yeah, I mean one of the 


other reasons that I suggested having a -- a 


focused review is -- is because of this very 


difficulty. There's some questions I have that 


I can't ask here, or at least they -- NIOSH 


can't answer here -- here in public because of 


the -- the small number of -- of individuals 


involved and -- and so forth, and I think some 


of the pursuit of some of these technical 


issues involve privately -- information 


involving individuals and -- and so I'm trying 


to think of a way of -- that we can pursue this 


that doesn't -- al-- allows us to answer some 


of these technical issues, but -- you know, can 


-- can do it, not -- not in a -- a public 


forum. Now there's a possibility of a 


workgroup. There's a possibility of just doing 


that -- that in-- that individually. I -- I 


would suggest that the -- I would certainly 


speak in favor of the motion to postpone. I 


would suggest that we maybe talk about this at 


our -- I believe it's December -- 


 DR. WADE: December 6th. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- phone call and just try to 

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resolve a -- what the way forward will be. By 


that time hopefully we will have seen the 


additional information and -- and we can reach 


a resolution. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Wanda? 


 MS. MUNN: It would be wise, I think, for every 


member of the Board to make sure they've had an 


opportunity to read all the current existing 


documents on this prior to that phone call. It 


is the belief of some that those documents will 


contain the answers to the questions that 


people want to pose, if they are read 


carefully. Most of us I think have an 


opportunity only to scan these things when they 


come to us. Since this has become an issue, it 


would behoove us all to take careful care, read 


it, and be prepared to see if we still have the 


same questions when we make our phone call. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other comments or 


recommendations? Okay, Larry, you have an 


additional comment? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I just want to make sure that 


it's stated here for the record that we have 


followed the law in our regulations, and those 


-- the law and the regulations require us to 

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answer that two-part -- two-pronged question. 


You heard the petitioner talk about the 


perception he holds that we have not accurately 


reconstructed his dose. We feel that we have 


accurately reconstructed his dose on a dose 


reconstruction, as well as accurately can 


reconstruct dose for this class -- not only by 


bounding, but by more precise estimation of 


dose. So that's one comment I feel is 


important for the record. 


 Another comment I would offer is that there's 


risk here. Our policy has been to advance 


petitions that qualify so that we can give full 


explanation and rational, clear understanding ­

- if we can impart that -- to petitioners on 


how we go about doing our work, whether it's 


dose reconstruction or an evaluation of the 


petition. So in that -- in that effort, we 


have not held back and -- and denied these one-


party petitions, if you will, where the class 


is so small, it's so narrow, that it represents 


an individual who's not happy with perhaps the 


outcome of a dose reconstruction. So I think 


that needs to be considered as -- as well. 


It's been our policy to advance these forward, 

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but you could find yourself dealing with a lot 


of individual-represented petitions. This is 


not an appeal board, as you know, but it 


certainly -- there's risk there toward that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Are you ready to vote 


on the motion --


 DR. MELIUS: Can --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- to postpone? 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just respond? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 DR. MELIUS: I think Larry did -- is making a ­

- a good point there and concur, and some of 


the problem with this, the -- dealing with this 


petition is that we get into -- may not be 


dealing with SEC issues, per se, but into the 


reconstruction issues related to that 


individual and it -- it's awkward and -- in 


some ways and -- and -- and does have some 


peril. So I mean we are, I think -- at least 


I'm -- and I think others are cognizant of -- 


of that. At the same time I certainly think in 


this case, as I read the petition and you-- 


your res-- your response to it, that -- I mean 


I think it was justified to handle this as an 


SEC petition. I think a legi-- a very -- a 

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legitimate issue came up about capability of 


doing accurate dose reconstruction, and so I -- 


I find nothing, you know, wrong with what 


you're doing. I don't think you're erring 


(unintelligible) or not. That may not always 


be, you know -- I mean these are -- these cases 


are difficult, I think, simply by the nature of 


how you have to deal with them and -- and this 


is one avenue for so-called appeal. But -- but 


I -- I mean I do think it was justified to 


follow the steps. It -- it is harder to -- for 


us to deal with it because of the privacy 


situation, as well as this issue of getting 


into -- sort of commenting on an individual 


dose reconstruction that's in process, which is 


something we try to avoid. 


 DR. ZIEMER: As a caution, we need to duly note 


that we don't want this to be a back-door 


appeal process for every failed dose 


reconstruction. 


Now are we ready to vote on the motion to 


postpone? The motion to postpone carries with 


it an implied -- well, not implied; an agreed-


upon discussion at least of where we are at the 


next meeting in determination of next steps at 

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that point, assuming we have the documents all 


in place by that time. 


Those who favor the motion, raise your right 


hand. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


 Any opposed to the motion? 


 (No responses) 


Abstentions? 


(Indicating) 


 One abstention. 


The motion carries. Thank you very much. 


 DR. WADE: Do you wish to have your vote 


recorded? 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'll vote in favor. 


 DR. WADE: Okay, so that's 11 in favor, one 


abstention. And I put it on our tentative 


agenda for a December 6th call. I guess I 


would ask someone on the NIOSH staff to 


interface with the petitioner to be sure that 


we get that information. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Next --


 MR. ELLIOTT: Laurie will contact him and make 


sure we get the information, distribute it to 


the Board and post it on the O drive. 


Y-12 SEC PETITION
 
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 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Next we're ready to 


proceed on a Y-12 SEC petition. LaVon again is 


going to present the evaluation report for 


NIOSH. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: (Off microphone) Can you check 


and see if (unintelligible)? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, [Name Redacted]* is to 


represent the petitioners. Is she on the line? 


(Pause) 


UNIDENTIFIED: No. 


 DR. ZIEMER: At the -- at the moment she's not 


on the line. Do we need to contact her first, 


or shall we proceed? 


 DR. WADE: Well, we should try to contact her. 


Do you have the contact information -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, before we do that, we have a 


conflict on Y-12? 


 DR. WADE: Yes. They've stepped away from the 


table. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Mr. Presley and Dr. Poston ­

- is that it, just the two, have reclused (sic) 


themselves. They are conflicted on this one. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: We'll have to check with 


Laurie Breyer to see if she's got [Name 


Redacted] phone number. 

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 DR. WADE: Okay. (Unintelligible) do that? 


Larry's (unintelligible). I think we should 


proceed. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, 'cause she has the report. 


Let's go ahead then, LaVon, if you'll proc-- 


proceed with the presentation. Perhaps she'll 


come on shortly. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: All right. I'm LaVon 


Rutherford and I'm going to present the Y-12 


SEC petition, that would be SEC Petition number 


00039. 


We received this petition on July 28, 2005. 


Our initial review of that petition was that it 


did not qualify and we issued a proposed 


finding that the petition did not qualify on 


September 28. In January 26th of the following 


year the petitioner requested an administrative 


review of that petition. 


From the time that the petitioner requested the 


administrative review, there's a -- as I 


mentioned yesterday, a number of things that 


went on. We did an internal assessment of our 


own process to ensure that we were communing 


well -- communicating well with the 


petitioners. We also got Laurie Breyer on 

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board as our SEC petition counselor. Dr. 


Lockey's group looked at the SEC petition 


process to -- at petitions that did not qualify 


and provided recommendations as well -- ways 


that we could communicate better with the 


petitioners, so -- Dr. Lockey's group did not 


get a chance to look at that actual petition 


because it was in the administrative review -- 


review process at the time. 


 The administrative review panel came back with 


a recommendation that we should qualify the 


petition because they felt we did not provide 


clear justification to the petitioner for not 


qualifying that petition. 


So on January 11th, 2007 we qualified the 


petition and moved forward with our evaluation. 


On June 29th we issued our evaluation report 


and -- to the Board and the petitioners. 


 The petitioner's proposed class was all 


statisticians who performed statistical 


analysis of biological experiments related to 


radiation who worked in all locations at Y-12 


from the period of January 31st in 1951 through 


June 30th, 1959. 


There were a number of reasons we modified that 

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class definition. One, we had a -- a previous 


SEC petition that had completed evaluation that 


actually evaluated class up through the end of 


1957, so this person was included in that 


portion of the class. And then we also -- 


because the petition basis was an acute 


incident occurring in the first quarter of 


1958, we modified the class definition to -- 


for the years -- or for the period January 1, 


1958 through June 30th, 1958. 


All right, a little (unintelligible) on Y-12. 


Y-12 National Security Complex is located in 


eastern Tennessee. It was part of the 


Manhattan Project. Its function was to produ-- 


process uranium for the first atomic bomb. 


Construction of Y-12 started in February of 


1943. Enriched uranium production started in 


November of that year. 


 The first site mission was to separate uranium235 from natural uranium by the electromagnetic 


separation process. 


Since World War II Y-12 missions have included 


uranium enrichment, lithium enrichment, isotope 


separation and component fabrication. 


After World War II the -- there was a 

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moratorium on construction of facilities at the 


Y-12 facility -- or down in the Oak Ridge 


complex. Oak Ridge National Lab needed 


facilities to do work with their Biological 


Science division. There was the -- there was 


facilities at Y-12 that were no longer in use 


because of the Calutron operations had ceased 


and left some buildings available, so the Oak 


Ridge National Lab used some of the Y-12 -- was 


given some of the Y-12 facilities to con-- 


conduct their animal research concerning 


carcinogen used at -- carcinogens. The 


Biological Science division used sealed 


radioactive sources of cesium, cobalt, 


californium to do their experiments. 


In our evaluation we looked at a number of 


sources for information. We looked at the 


existing Y-12 site profile. We looked at 


Technical Information Bulletins that we 


currently had. We had interviews with former 


employees and case files in the NIOSH database, 


looked at the site research database 


specifically for incidents and things that may 


have led -- that would have been indi-- been 


indicative of this event. We looked at the Y­
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12 Delta View Imaging system. We -- in that 


system we -- again we looked for incident 


reports of things from the ear-- the '58 time 


period to see if we could, you know, find an 


incident where this occurred. We also reviewed 


documentation and affidavits provided by the 


petitioner. 


Other technical documents, we looked at 


dosimetry documents on fogging or light leaks 


that had -- was identified in this petition. 


We also looked at medical reports on acute 


radiation syndrome. 


 Radiation exposures occurred through -- to the 


class. The principal internal exposures would 


have been from the residual uranium from the 


(unintelligible) production operations that 


occurred in the facilities. We did look at the 


possibility of leaking sealed sources -- 


leaking of the sealed sources. We had no 


indications of any source leaks during the time 


period, or in the few years after, of this 


petition. 


We looked at principal external radiation 


exposures were beta -- beta exposures from 


residual uranium contamination, gamma exposures 

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from the cesium and cobalt sources, and neutron 


exposures from a californium-252 source. 


As of November 20th, 1951, all Oak Ridge 


National Laboratories, regardless of work area, 


were required to wear a combination security 


badge and film dosimeter. NIOSH has external 


monitoring data for -- for members of the 


class. 


 NIOSH's evaluation on this class -- we -- we 


focused on external monitoring because of the 


exposure scenario identified. The exposure 


scenario was identified was an acute exposure 


occurring in the early 1958 period and that the 


-- a film badge reading was falsified which I ­

- I actually identified this acute exposure. 


Therefore, our focus was -- like I mentioned, 


we did look at the -- looked for indications of 


failure, leakage sealed sources, and had no 


indication. So our focus on internal 


monitoring was on uranium then, and we had 


internal monitoring data for some members of 


the class, and we also have a Y-12 coworker 


model. 


Issues identified by the petitioner and -- and 


our findings with -- with respect to those 

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issues. Petitioners submitted medical evidence 


of a depressed white blood count for a member 


of the class, and actual -- the -- actually 


submitted a number of reports on the -- this 


white blood count that actually started from -- 


records indicate that they started in '58 up 


through -- all the way up until the person 


acquired a form of leukemia later in -- around 


1990. 


We also looked at -- and -- and based on that 


information, there was the expo-- as I 


mentioned, there was a film badge reading that 


indicated roughly 4.3 rem exposure. That film 


badge reading was lined out and identified with 


100 percent light leak, and it also included in 


the interview with the employee that -- that 


employee indicated that they were not aware of 


being involved in any radiological exposures. 


The technicians and the -- the individuals that 


looked at the film badge made the determination 


that it was caused from a light leak in the 


film badge and therefore it was lined out and 


identified 100 percent light transmission and 


they were given a zero on the badge reading to 


-- to be consistent with their other badge 

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readings they had previously received. 


I want to point out that the -- the actual -- 


the levels that -- of a film badge are not 


consistent with what you would see for a 


reduced white blood count. 4.3 rem is roughly 


on an order of magnitude below what you would 


see blood changes and could be much higher than 


that to see the reduced white blood count 


indicated. Also, for this acute incident to 


have occurred in this area, you would had to 


had a failure of interlocks and administrative 


controls. The highest source at that time -- I 


know if you look at the report you'll see a 


source that indicates that it releases -- or 


the exposure rate of over 400 rems per hour. 


However, that source was not in place in -- in 


the 1958 period. It went into place in 1962. 


That should have been reflected in the report 


but it's not. 


 The sources that were available, the highest 


exposure source was 26.5 rem per hour. That 


source would have had to been exposed for a 


considerable period of time, for hours, in 


order to -- an individual at one meter to 


receive the exposure indicated. 

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As I indicated earlier, we reviewed the Oak 


Ridge National Lab and Y-12 incident -- 


incident reports. We had no indication of an 


incident that would have delivered an exposure 


of this level. 


We also looked at the monitoring data for other 


-- the biological science division employees to 


see if we had indications of higher readings 


during a given time, and we had no indications 


of any higher readings for those individuals. 


And we looked at the -- the medical evince -- 


evidence in itself does not support an acute 


exposure. Typically seen from acute exposure 


to high level of radiation causing a reduced 


white blood count you will have a drop in the 


white blood count to a -- a level, and 


subsequently that white blood count, over the 


weeks following, will return back to a normal 


level. What we've seen from the medical 


evidence provided was that a chronic expo-- a 


chronic low white blood count for a number of 


years. And if you actually look at one of the 


medical reports, it indicates that the 


individual in question is -- white blood count 


was at the low level in -- if you would look at 

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a range of white blood counts being 5,000 to 


10,000 being the normal range, this 


individual's white blood count was around 5,000 


in the years prior to this supposed incident 


occurring. 


So based on what we've seen -- and we also 


noticed that if you looked at the levels of the 


white blood counts in the subsequent years, 


they ranged from roughly 1,950 up to 5,150 in 


the following years, and then they were fairly 


constant from that point on. 


As we mentioned, the petitioner identified a 


film badge reading that they felt had been 


modified that was indicative of this exposure 


incident occurring. This film badge reading 


again was investigated by Oak Ridge National 


Lab and determined to be caused by a light 


leak, and I did review that report. 


We also looked at other reports and we did 


actually find another report at Oak Ridge 


National Lab and at Y-12 that had similar 


findings for 100 percent light leak on four 


individuals, so this is not a -- necessarily an 


isolated incident. 


We -- again the employee was consulted and 

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indicated no past history of radiation 


exposure. We did look at their individ-- that 


individual's readings, and they did have some 


external monitoring exposure. I think 17 


millirem was identified in a quarter, and 


possibly 100 millirem in another quarter. So 


although that was indicated at that time, that 


they had no -- no experience of exposure 


history, I did want to point out that we did 


review their records to look at that. 


And we did look at the indication of tears and 


pinholes and stuff in the film badge. It is a 


-- a phenomenon that is ki-- that was seen in 


the industry at that time, so that is not 


something that was just identified at Y-12 or 


Oak Ridge National Lab. 


 Our evaluation process -- I also wanted to go 


back to -- among the concerns -- I apologize. 


One concern was -- is a criticality incident 


that occurred at Y-12 in 1958. And if you look 


at the report, in the report it clearly lays 


out that the inci-- that the 1958 criticality 


occurred I think in -- it was August or 


September --


 DR. ZIEMER: June. 

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 MR. RUTHERFORD: June, thank you, I couldn't 


remember -- which was later in the year from -- 


from the supposed first quarter 1958 


occurrence. 


 So two-pronged test, is it feasible to estimate 


the level of radiation dose for individual 


members of the class. If we answer that yes, 


we don't ask the second question, is there a 


reasonable likelihood of health endangerment. 


We found that the available monitoring data, 


process, source term description -- source term 


data are sufficient to complete dose 


reconstruction for the proposed class. NIOSH 


determined it is feasible to complete dose re-- 


dose reconstruction with sufficient accuracy; 


therefore a health endangerment determination 


is not required. 


In summary, the internal exposures from uranium 


and all external exposures can be calculated 


for the individual -- or for the proposed 


class. And our recommendation is that we can 


reconstruct dose. 


Questions? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, LaVon. This now is 


open to questions. Let's find out if the 

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petitioner is on the line. Is [Name Redacted]* 


on the line now? 


 DR. WADE: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


someone calling her immediately outside the 


door. We've been trying to contact her all day 


and have not been successful. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Apparently not at this moment. 


 DR. WADE: Laurie -- Laurie is trying. I asked 


her to try at the end of LaVon's comments. 


 DR. ZIEMER: LaVon, I'd like to ask a couple of 


questions. I think you implied that the -- the 


large cesium source was not in -- I assumed it 


was the cesium source -- was not in use at that 


time. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, in fact, you know, in 


preparations for the -- my presentation, when I 


drew in all the information, I -- I was 


concerned because our report did not identify 


that and I actually went back and verified that 


the large cesium source did not come into 


operation till -- it was like 1961 or '62. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Now I also want to ask 


about the californium source during this period 


because my recollection of -- is that 


californium wasn't -- sources weren't really 

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being used till the '60s. Am I right? Isn't 

that too early for californium as well? We can 

call on Dr. Poston as a site expert. 

 DR. POSTON: Well, I -- you're correct. 

There's a couple of things -- and I am 

conflicted, but I have to tell you that I 


participated in the installation of that 


californium source in the biology division, and 


it didn't occur before about 1967. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. 


 DR. POSTON: I'm estimating probably 1971. 


The health physics division at Oak Ridge 


National Lab installed that and calibrated that 


source. There was no source. Also, it could 


not have been 3.9 curies -- maybe 3.9 


microcuries -- 'cause in those days we were 


making small quantity sources, not -- I don't 


think we made four curies total since we 


started making californium. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. Well, californium sources 


weren't available anywhere in the country, or 


perhaps the world, till later. So the only 


source I think that would be under considered ­

- consideration would be the cobalt source -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Okay. 

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150

 DR. ZIEMER: -- possibly. Is that correct? 
I 

-- I think you were saying that the 80-curie 


cesium probably wasn't in play until -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: The way I understood was the 


cesium source was the cesium -- the 65-curie 


cesium source was in play. The 


(unintelligible) --


 DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible)? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, the actual cobalt one 


was, but that -- the 65-curie ce-- or cesium 


source actually had the higher dose rate at -- 


well, actually -- I'm sorry -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Couldn't the --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- curie. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- cobalt runs roughly four times 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- on dose rate --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- at -- at a distance than 


cesium, so --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: But it -- we actually have a 


dose rate in there on the cobalt source if you 


look -- take a look at it. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 

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(Unintelligible) 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. Yeah, and it's only a 


3.75 curie source. There was five --


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm -- so it seemed like --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- R per hour. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- the cesium source would give 


more output is what --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, the cesium source we've 


identified is rated at 26.5. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, that's the rate. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, that's the one I called 


out. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, I see. Oh, okay. I gotcha. 


 MR. GRIFFON: And that was there at the time? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. I -- I (unintelligible) on 


that. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: And that's the one that's 


called out in the report, later on in the 


report, if you look at the feasibility section. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And can you also tell us whether 


that was a fixed source such as in a fixed 


irradiator, or was it portable? 

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 MR. RUTHERFORD: I believe it was a fixed 


source in a fixed irradiator is the way I 


understood it. Now I've -- I would probably 


have to go back and -- and double-check on 


that, but the way I understand, it was a fixed 


source. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Other questions? 


 DR. WADE: We've -- we've called just this 


moment and the woman is not available. She's 


not there. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Was that -- just trying to get my 


bearings remembering the buildings in Y-12, the 


criticality accident that you identified that 


did happen later in June of '58, was that in 


the same area? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, I think if you look in 


your report there's actually a map on that, and 


they are considerably -- a considerable 


distance between them -- buildings, no-- 


 DR. ZIEMER: What you mean by same area, it's a 


couple buildings over. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Probably several hundred meters. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, if you -- and it's 


actually laid out in the -- in the report and ­
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-


 DR. ZIEMER: The criticality accident, though, 


was quite well-characterized and -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah -- oh, yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- the dose rates at various 


buildings are quite well-known. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right, but my -- I 


guess my question was were -- were they doing 


different types of research activities or -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Well, the --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- you know. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- criticality incident -- and 


-- and I think --


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- Dr. Ziemer could give you 


better information on that, but was more of a ­

- a liquid tank coming together and coming to a 


criticality. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It was a cleaning operation. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Sometimes referred to as the 


impromptu barrel reactor, because we were 


draining stuff into a barrel. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. No, I -- I -- I've seen 


all the reports on that. I guess what I'm 

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asking is, the research activities in the area 


where this person -- these statisticians were. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: No. There was actually no 


other work like that -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right, right --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: -- going on. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And this was X-10 work -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and the other was Y-12 work. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right, right. 


 MS. BREYER: I did want to give the Board an 


update on the petitioner. I e-mailed her on 


the 14th with the information, in Sep-- on 


September the 14th, and I also called her on 


September 19th and verbally gave her that 


information as well (unintelligible) interested 


in listening. I called and was unable to get 


anybody to answer, but they might -- you might 


want to check just one more time, make sure 


nobody on the phone -- that she's not 


listening. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Wanda Munn? 


 MS. MUNN: I'm prepared to move that we accept 


NIOSH's evaluation of this petition as it is 

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described in the documentation. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. There's a motion to accept 


the NIOSH recommendation, which would then be a 


recommendation to the Secretary that the 


petition be denied. Is there a second to that 


motion? 


DR. ROESSLER: Second. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Seconded. Okay, discussion? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Can I -- can I ask a -- a --


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah --


 MR. GRIFFON: -- follow-up on --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- sure. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- on the -- you -- you mentioned 


in one of your la-- later slides that you do 


have the data to reconstruct -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- you know, I -- I'm curious, 


this one individual who had the -- a -- at 


least apparently, you know, erroneous badge 


reading --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- which was corrected to zero, 


you -- so how would you reconstruct for the 


statisticians? Would you use a coworker model 


or do you have sufficient data individually or 

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-- or --


 MR. RUTHERFORD: We would use coworker mo-- I 


mean we could use the coworker model from the 


statisticians, but I think we need to -- I mean 


we could also give them, you know, a -- 


depending on what we determine, we could use 


the LOD-type detection because of the fact that 


their exposures up to that point were zero. 


mean -- so I think that the data -- we have 


enough data that we could use -- if we 


determine that it wa more appropriate to give 


them a -- a coworker model external exposure, 


we have that data to do it. All right? 


Otherwise -- and really, to be -- you know -- 


well, I shouldn't even say it, but you know, we 


-- we've done dose reconstruction on it 


already. 


 DR. ZIEMER: LaVon, do any of the members of 


the -- or any of the petitioners allege that 


they actually were aware of an incident -- for 


example, there are cases where -- in these kind 


of facilities where the source gets stuck in 


the out position and somebody goes in -- you 


know, they're irradiating mice or something, 


and then they think the source is back in the 


I 
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shield and they wander in and -- and get 


substantial exposure -- by substantial, perhaps 


50, 60, 70 -- which happened in the -- oh, one 


of the animal facilities at Oak Ridge that's 


operated by the U. of Tennessee and -- 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Yeah, I did that dose 


reconstruction, by the way. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, so -- so then -- but 


normally when that occurs, the -- the 


individuals involved know that that has 


occurred. 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: Right. We have --


 DR. ZIEMER: Do any of these individuals allege 


that they inadvertently walked in when the 


source was out or anything like that? 


 MR. RUTHERFORD: No, we have -- and -- and 


that's the thing -- you know, just like you 


said, if -- if it occurs, it's going to occur ­

- I wouldn't expect it to occur necessarily to 


a statistician as much as if it was going to 


occur it would be to the actual technician 


performing the activities. And in the typical 


(unintelligible) that occurs, you know, it is 


known because interlocks, the administrative 


controls, things have been violated for it to 

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occur, you know, so -- you know, and -- and 


when -- as I mentioned, when I did the dose 


reconstruction for the individual that -- the 


one you were talking about, there were a number 


of interlocks that were violated in that 


situation, so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: We have a motion before us. 


Anyone wish to speak for or against the motion? 


Or are you ready to vote? 


 (No responses) 


I take it we're ready to vote. All who favor 


the motion, which would be to concur with the 


NIOSH assessment and recommend that the 


petition be denied, raise your right hand. 


 (Affirmative responses) 


One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 


nine, ten -- I see ten. 


Are there -- apparently no noes, and no 


abstentions. The motion carries. 


 DR. WADE: Ten zero with two members away from 


the table. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Okay, thank you very much. 


The two members are -- may now rejoin us. 


Welcome back. 


 DR. WADE: We feel whole again. 

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159 

Florence Black, are you -- can you come up and 


join us? 


PLANS TO PROCURE BOARD CONTRACTOR FOR FY09 AND BEYOND


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we're going to talk about 


our Board contractor for FY '09 and beyond, and 


Flo is -- is going to give us the scoop on how 


we proceed here. Lew, take a moment and 


introduce Flo more formally to the group. 


 DR. WADE: Florence Black, who might be known 


to some of you, is a contracting officer who 


works in Pittsburgh. David Staudt has done the 


work on the SC&A contract, but David has been 


detailed to Atlanta for some four months and 


during his absence Flo is taking on this part 


of his portfolio. We fully expect David to be 


back, possibly in time to proceed with most of 


these actions. But as I mentioned to you 


before, this is such an important contract and 


we all understand the vagaries of government 


progress on these things that we wanted to 


start very, very early in the process. So 


rather than wait for David to be back, we 


thought we would begin now the process of 


moving towards the recompetition of the 


contract that provides technical support to the 

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160 

Board. That contract runs through the fiscal 


year we're in now, which means that SC&A will 


be on the job through September of 2008. We 


have time, but best that we begin now. 


 What we've done to sort of prime the pump is 


we've provided you with the statement of work ­

- tasks -- that were used the last time, with 


one modification. Flo and I added in the -- 


the new task for SEC work that was added to the 


original contract. So the statement of work 


you have is basically the statement of work 


that was used to compete the last time, with 


the task added in for SEC work, as the contract 


was modified. 


We've also included the evaluation plan that 


was in essence used last time. There were some 


slight modifications to put it into the format 


that CDC uses now. So you have the statement 


of work and the evaluation plan. 


I've also shown to you -- and Flo has posted 


this on the public web site so that the world 


can see everything that we do. I would rather 


have all of the discussions regarding our 


pursuit of a new contractor public. And I 


think the best way to do that is to put all the 

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161 

documents on the public web site so that the 


world can see and comment at the same time we 


discuss them. 


What -- what will happen, I think, is that we 


can have the discussion now related to those 


documents. Individual Board members can make 


comment to Flo or I between now and the 


December 6th meeting. At the December 6th 


meeting we can have another discussion of the 


statement of work and the evaluation plan. 


Hopefully after that we would be in a position 


to move forward with an announcement of our 


intent to solicit that would hit the street in 


January, and then the full solicitation would 


be out when, Flo? 


MS. BLACK: Hopefully by the end of March. 


 DR. WADE: The only other thing that we want to 


lay before you is -- the process as it -- the 


selection process and evaluation process, as it 


will take place, will have the formation of a 


technical advisory panel. In the past that 


panel was chaired by the technical project 


officer -- that would be my position. The last 


time we had, I think, three Board members who 


participated on the technical evaluation panel, 

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162 

and we ne-- we'd like to -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Two, I think it was two. 


 DR. MELIUS: Paul and Mark, I think. 


 DR. WADE: Paul and Mark? I don't know the -- 


I don't know the third name, so Paul and Mark 


at least -- do you think -- 


 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


remember being on it? 


 DR. WADE: Do you remember? 


 MR. GRIFFON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


two. 


MS. BLACK: I -- I thought there were -- a -- a 


third one when I looked in the file, but maybe 


I read it wrong, perhaps. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Tony might have been on it. Do 


you think it was... 


MS. BLACK: There were two people that had the 


training that's required, and one didn't have 


to have it because the Board composition was 


okay, but I -- that's what I was thinking was 


from the Board. 


 DR. WADE: Maybe it was Tony. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I --


 DR. MELIUS: Could have been Tony, yeah. 


 DR. WADE: So -- so if you would like to 

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163 

recommend two or three -- when a technical 


panel is put together of any members, it's 


necessary that at least half of them have gone 


through training. So depending upon the size 


of the panel and the Board members we select, 


it's possible that a Board member selected 


might have to take training, which is a five-


day class that can be taken on line. 


I'll say this off-record -- we'll try and 


shield you from that, but it might be necessary 


for you to have to take that. 


 DR. MELIUS: Five days? 


 DR. WADE: Five days. Take it on line. 


MS. BLACK: Yeah -- well, we hope you can take 


it on line; I can't guarantee that. And if you 


take it for five days, you take a test. It's a 


tested class. 


 DR. WADE: Now my records show that Dr. Ziemer 


is duly tested --


MS. BLACK: Yes. 


 DR. WADE: -- trained and tested. Mark is not. 


So we would hope that, based upon the 


arithmetic, maybe the Board members wouldn't 


have to take the training. 


So that's everything. We can talk about it. 

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164 

You can question Flo. 


MS. BLACK: Okay, I -- I did want to make a 


couple of comments. First of all, a few of you 


know that actually because of things that 


occurred in the contracting office back in 


2003, I actually was the specialist that made 


the original award. It had been transferred to 


me during a transition of -- of staff, and then 


I trans-- it was then assigned to David when he 


was hired, so I'm a little familiar with -- 


with the -- the basics of the support for the 


Board. And I think some of you have heard my 


name in other contexts, too. 


There are a couple -- if you read these 


announcements, these were posted. The 


www.fbo.gov is a public web site, anybody can 


go to it. I've had -- already had one inquiry 


and the -- it's of a very general nature, just 


asking me was this a recompete. But anybody 


can go to it. This will be up there for quite 


a while. 


I do want to caution you that if you go to the 


statement of work and print it, you're going to 


find out that, because I cut and pasted it from 


a Word document, that particular web site takes 

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165 

all things like apostrophes and -- and 


quotation marks and turns them into question 


marks, so you're going to see a lot of question 


marks if you -- if you print that out. Or if 


anybody you know prints it out please tell them 


we didn't fill it with question marks. It's a 


-- it's a fluke in the system and feel free to 


share this document with anyone now that it's a 


public document, it's not restricted in any 


way. 


If you'd like I'll -- I'll do a -- a quick 


review of this, just -- 


 DR. WADE: Please. 


MS. BLACK: The statement of work starts out 


with --


 DR. WADE: Everybody should have it in their 


book --


MS. BLACK: And there are copies in the back 


for -- out there. This is the standard format, 


it starts out C.1, because the statement of 


work in a contract or in a request for proposal 


is section C, so it starts out C.1. And to the 


extent that you have any comments that -- that 


you want to make on them, if you can reference 


the section, that's really helpful 'cause then 

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we'll know you're -- you're -- that's what 


you're talking about. 


Yes? 


MS. BEACH: I have a question. Are the 


inquiries that are made on the web site, are 


those posted, and the answers? 


MS. BLACK: No, this is not a formal synopsis. 

MS. BEACH: Okay. 

MS. BLACK: Okay? The formal synopsis we hope 

to post the first week of January, depending on 


-- on how that falls out with ev-- everybody's 


schedule. This is -- this was published under 


what's called a special notice, but the number 


that's given to it is the request for proposal 


number that will follow it through the whole 


process, that 2008-N-09682. Good question, 


because when it's -- when the proposal goes on 


it and inquiries are made, all of those answers 


are posted. This was just to ask for public 


comment, and we can -- as -- as a Board, you 


can include the comments. We, as a -- you 


know, a contracting office, as Lew and his 


staff, can read the comments and say they don't 


apply, and we don't have to respond to them 


when it's a special notice. It's just to get 

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167 

feedback. And -- and because Lew and the rest 


of us are very concerned about making the 


process as transparent as possible because of 


the nature of the work, so we put it out as a 


special notice. 


This is not usually done in -- this -- it's not 


a -- it's not a standard contract procedure. 


It's completely acceptable, but it's not a 


standard contract procedure. Usually the first 


thing you see out there is the synopsis. 


 But the statement of work is the one with all 


the Cs, and it's again in the standard format. 


The purpose of the contract, the -- the 


background and need, which talks about all the 


regulations and the -- and the establishment of 


the Board. Then the specific tasks, which are 


divided into sub-parts under C.3, and that's 


the lengthiest part -- as it always is since 


that's where we describe what's necessary. And 


that's the formal statement of work as -- as it 


will go -- this could be the final one, if -- 


if no one has any comments that need to be 


incorporated, this may be what ends up as 


section C of the actual request for proposal. 


And then, unless we would make changes as a 

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168 

result of the proposals we would get, this 


could be the final contract. 


 DR. WADE: Now under the explanation we have A, 


B and C. A is individual dose reconstruction 


reviews, and there we talk about the blind 


reviews, the advanced reviews, the basic 


reviews -- as we did before. B is NIOSH/OCAS 


site profiles and procedures reviews. And then 


C is review of SEC petitions, so it's -- it 


covers all the work we're currently doing, 


consistent with the terminology you currently 


use. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Does this automatically cover -- 


there is another task, which is ma-- mainly a 


tracking task. I think it may be Task IV; I'm 


looking for John Mauro -- 


 DR. WADE: Task II. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- or Task II? 


 DR. WADE: We don't do that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: No, but they do a --


 MS. MUNN: We have other tracking that we're -- 


 DR. WADE: They developed a tracking system. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, they developed a tracking 


(unintelligible). 


DR. MAURO: In the previous -- the first 

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169 

contract there was a Task II for the tracking 


system. That has been completed and delivered. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, here we go -- oh, we've got 


procedures and site profile in one here, so 


that's -- that --


 DR. WADE: The procedures. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I was looking for a fourth task. 


 DR. WADE: Correct, the procedures task is 


there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: We don't call out a project 


management task. I think that's up to the 


offerors to -- to propose back to us. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, that was the other one, 


project management, but that's kind of built in 


here. Right? 


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


MS. BLACK: That's actually -- when you look at 


the criteria, you'll see that's the second 


evaluation criteria. Any other --


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, what do we -- do you need 


specific comments today or are you just 


soliciting --


MS. BLACK: That's your -- that's your choice. 

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170

 DR. WADE: If you want to guide us in a 


different direction immediately -- 


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. WADE: -- that's fine. If Board members 


want to give us individual comments, that's 


fine. On the 6th we'll have you together again 


as a duly constituted group. You can comment 


then. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I believe this -- now that I see 


the hard copy, I got this recently by 


electronic copy, I don't know if the Board 


members have had a chance to go through this 


and digest it. It looks a lot like what we had 


before --


MS. BLACK: Uh-huh. 


 DR. WADE: It's the same. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- almost verbatim. 


MS. BLACK: Uh-huh. 


 DR. ZIEMER: But do you wish to -- to submit 


your comments individually, which we can do, or 


you can do it -- do them here? 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I -- I'd like to get this on 


the agenda for the December meeting conference 


call. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it will be. 

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 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, well, but then let me follow 


up. I think there's some issues that we need 


to think about. I'm not sure we'd make 


changes, but number one is the -- for the dose 


reconstruction reviews, I think that 


subcommittee members should certainly think are 


there changes that we want to have. Are we --


are we satisfied with the -- the current mix 


and -- and -- of types of reviews. Is there 


something we -- we need to, you know, think 


about in -- in terms of --


 DR. ZIEMER: So you would be suggesting that we 


ask the subcommittee, for example, to give us 


input on that particular issue at the December 


meeting. 


 DR. MELIUS: Correct. The second thing I -- 


I'd like to have us think about would be the -- 


something we -- we talked about this morning. 


Are we -- and I think it applies to site 


profile reviews, also. I think -- when we 


talked about the Special Exposure Cohort 


evaluation reviews for large sites, we talked 


about getting away from, you know, a single 


large review to -- to -- I don't know if it's 


focused review, but a series of -- of -- of -- 

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sort of a step-wise process to this and -- and 


I don't know if that needs to be reflected in 


the -- the contract document or not. It may --


I'm not even sure it's something everybody 


agrees with. We haven't really tried it yet, 


though. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm wondering if it would be 


worthwhile -- and you could do this off-line-- 


is describe that a little more for Florence so 


that she might be able to tell you how much 


specificity we need in here. It -- it really 


is a description of how the contractor 


currently on the large sites would be carrying 


out the site profile review. It's sort of the 


direction that Hanford's going and sort of what 


was done at -- at Nevada Test Site, and I think 


that's what you're talking about, should that 


be reflected in the document. 


 DR. MELIUS: Correct. I -- correct, and I 


think for site profile -- I think we're -- I 


don't believe NIOSH is going to be preparing 


too many more new complete site profiles, but 


they're -- they're, quote/unquote, living 


documents and they would, you know, continue to 


evolve and so, again, may-- that may be a more 

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focused review and in order to -- I think to 


have a fair, you know, competition, that -- 


that we need to specify exactly what -- what 


we're looking for. 


Another area I think that I would suggest NIOSH 


think about -- and again, there -- there may no 


-- not be any changes planned, but if NIOSH is 


going -- thinks it's going in a new direction 


in terms of how it's going to be, you know, 


doing its work or -- or -- or something, that ­

- then, you know, maybe there's some changes 


there. I -- I'm not sure I can even think of 


any, but it's -- it's a possibility. 


 DR. WADE: The PER possibly. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, exactly. That -- that's -- 


that's one. I think, again, we also have a 


procedures workgroup which -- 


 MS. MUNN: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 DR. MELIUS: Huh? 


 MS. MUNN: Stop -- stop right there. 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, I'm just going to suggest 


that -- I'm not going to tread -- I'm not, I'm 


not trespassing. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, she's -- you're going to 


take away what she was going to say. 

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 DR. MELIUS: Well --


 MS. MUNN: Go ahead. I'm being facetious and I 


shouldn't. Go ahead. 


 DR. MELIUS: What I was going to suggest is the 


procedures workgroup should also think about, 


you know, are there -- you know, something 


about the way that task is described, should it 


be a separate task. Again, that's going to be 


a question of updated procedures, new 


procedures, if it's a -- that, and so forth. 


And -- and I don't know how all this affects 


contract, but -- contracting process, but it 


seems to me that a lot of this'll be, you know, 


smaller reviews in terms of scope rather than ­

- than somebody like a complete site profile 


review, so the task would be, you know, for, so 


 DR. WADE: That's exactly what we need to have 


a discussion about. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I --


 DR. ZIEMER: And --


 DR. WADE: We just used the same numbers, 40 


procedures, six --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 DR. WADE: -- site profiles, as a starting 

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point. Now based upon experience to date, we 


need to modify (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. The other thing we didn't 


know at the front end when we entered into all 


of this was what the resolution process would 


look like. And it might be of value to the 


bidders or the potential contractors to have 


some idea of what that -- that's become a 


substantial part of what we do. It is part of 


dose reconstruction reviews and site profile 


reviews, but the resolution process itself is a 


substantial effort and we need to make sure 


that it is covered in the description here in 


some way. 


Wanda, you have a comment. 


 MS. MUNN: Oh, a couple of quick things. When 


we have our -- our reports later in the day, 


the procedures workgroup has a couple of things 


to say about changes that might go on that 


probably wouldn't affect this SOW. 


It would be very helpful for me, and I think 


perhaps some others, if -- if I could get a 


feel for the changes that have occurred from 


the original SOW that we processed in years 


past and this one. I can see that there are 

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several specific changes, but I -- I guess I -- 


I understand you're asking us to say and what 


else besides this --


 DR. ZIEMER: This is almost unchanged. 


 DR. WADE: That's the only -- that's the only 


thing I did -- 'cause I cut and pasted -- was 


take the original and then I took the SEC task, 


which was not part of the original contract, 


and I took the words out of it and pasted it in 


here as Task V. 


 MS. MUNN: Okay. So I'm essentially looking at 


the same thing, with the addition of -- 


 DR. WADE: Right. 

 MS. MUNN: -- the SEC. 

 DR. WADE: Yeah, I could have tried to rewrite 

it, but I thought that would have been 


presumptuous of me. We need to -- I need to 


hear your comments and then we'll take those 


comments. But just as Dr. Melius is 


enumerating, those are the kinds of things I 


think need to be changed. We'd like to do it 


based upon your wisdom. 


 MS. MUNN: Yes, and -- and what you said, Jim, 


triggered something in -- a question from me, 


as well. We -- we should be pretty far along 

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in terms of the large site profiles now, are we 


not? We --


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: -- we're -- we're pretty much -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, so it's those revisions that 


he's referring to. 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 


 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


revisions and those revisions tend to be done 


by --


UNIDENTIFIED: In cycles. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- chapter. 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah, I --


UNIDENTIFIED: In cycles. 


 DR. MELIUS: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


done piecemeal (unintelligible) -- being fair 


to -- it's -- they -- done by chapters. I mean 


some are quite large and -- and involved and so 


forth, some are minor. But I -- but I think 


it changes how these'd be assigned and -- and 


so forth --


 MS. MUNN: Yeah, that's probably true. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: We're also getting further and 


further behind the target of two and a half 

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percent dose reconstructions -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Right. 


 MS. MUNN: Uh-huh. 

 DR. WADE: -- which is something else you could 

put in. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 MS. MUNN: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so we need some input -- 


we'll -- we'll need input from the dose 


reconstruction subcommittee, probably some 


input from the -- the procedures review 


workgroup --


MS. BLACK: Dr. Ziemer --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- general input from everybody on 


the issue of resolution of matrices and so on. 


MS. BLACK: Yeah, I -- I do want to say 


something, and maybe I'm not understanding 


'cause this is my first Board meeting, but we 


don't want to tell the peop-- the potential 


offerors exactly how we want them to do 


something. That's what they tell us. That's 


what we evaluate on. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, right, okay. 


MS. BLACK: 'Cause when you start talking about 


processes, what we want to tell them is what we 

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want them to -- the products we want from them, 


what we want them to do. Then they come back 


and tell us this is how we would do it. And 


those who tell us -- you know, and that's 


scored. That's what the -- the technical 


evaluation committee scores. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, for example, let -- let me 


take the conflict -- rather the issue 


resolution process. I'm not proposing that we 


tell them exactly how we're not -- how we're 


doing that now. 


MS. BLACK: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: But it seems to me that we -- we 


should at least say that they -- they need to 


tell us how they would suggest we do issue 


resolution if they raise issues in their review 


process. 


MS. BLACK: Right. Yeah, I -- you just -- when 


you started about process, I -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Because we -- we know factually 


that that's become a substantial part of the 


work of our contractor. 


MS. BLACK: And maybe we need to add something 


else in section C --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 

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MS. BLACK: -- and even in the evaluation 


criteria 'cause although we haven't talked 


about those yet, the evaluation criteria are 


supposed to feed off of the statement of work. 


And so to the extent that we add something 


substantive to section C, we might add another 


-- we don't even have to change the points. 


You just add another component to the 


evaluation criteria. 


 MS. MUNN: Yes, that resolution process bears 


heavily on the work we do in procedures 


workgroup and creates a -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, all the groups -- 


workgroups, yes. 


 MS. MUNN: Yes. 


 DR. WADE: Another reason I'd like you to -- to 


focus on now for discussion later is we have an 


evaluation plan of 100 points. We're proposing 


an additional plus or minus 20 points for past 


performance, think about that. That's a 


weighty subj-- a weighty amount to give to past 


performance. Of the 100 points, we're breaking 


it out -- ten points for understanding purpose 


and objectives, ten points for management 


approach, 25 points for the technical approach, 

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and then 25 points for corporate experience 


broken down into conflict of interest plan and 


work history -- and I neglected to say 30 


points for personnel. So those are numbers 


we're proposing --


 MR. GRIFFON: How does --


 DR. WADE: -- talk to us about. 


 MR. GRIFFON: How does this compare with the 


numbers -- the grading system we used last 


time? I don't recall. 


MS. BLACK: The format is different. CDC has a 


-- a different format now where we have these 


five umbrella subjects, and then we fit 


everything else under that. 


 DR. WADE: I tried to be consistent. 


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. WADE: No, the -- the past performance I 


think is a little higher than last time, or is 


it the same? 


MS. BLACK: No, I think it's the same. 


 DR. WADE: Same as last... 


MS. BLACK: Sometimes we do -- and that would, 


again, be something you could tell us what you 


want. We -- we never do lower than ten -- plus 


or minus ten on past performance, but we've 

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even done as high as 25, plus or minus. So it 


would depend on -- on how much weight you want 


to give to past performance, and that's over 


and above the 100 technical points. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) sounds -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Well --


UNIDENTIFIED: -- (unintelligible) weighty. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, we don't need to decide that 


today. 


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: She's saying --


MS. BLACK: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- heads up on that, another issue 


we need to resolve at -- 


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- perhaps at the next meeting. 


 DR. WADE: And again, just to -- to be clear on 


the -- people's expectations, the Board can say 


what it wishes and the contracting officer will 


listen and then do what the contracting officer 


thinks is appropriate. The Board doesn't hold 


the final decision here. I can't imagine the 


Board won't hold great sway over this process, 


though. 

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MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I raise an issue related to 


that? 


 DR. WADE: Sure. 


 DR. MELIUS: And again, pardon my memory and 


also I hope I don't offend anybody, but I -- I 


-- I think we also have to remember that there 


is a -- you know, the perception of how this 


process is done is -- is -- is important, and 


that to be fair to I think NIOSH and to the 


OCAS staff and so forth, I think we -- just be 


-- be careful in terms of how we make up the 


evaluation committee. I don't recall -- I -- I 


believe Jim Neton was on it last time. I don't 


remember --


 DR. WADE: I think Jim chaired it last time. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, and -- and -- and I would -- 


I don't have any objection to Jim personally, 


but -- but I think there'd be -- I'd have a 


concern this time about someone from NI-- 


NIOSH/OCAS chairing the evaluation committee. 


I'd also have a concern about there being a 


significant representation from NIOSH/OCAS on 


that committee, I -- 'cause not -- last time we 


had the -- the perception of the OCAS reviewing 

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who's going to be -- who is going to be 


evaluating them. This time we would be -- have 


the perception of -- of OCAS reviewing who has 


been ev-- who has been evaluating them. And 


although I don't expect there would be any 


problems, I'm not making that assertion, I 


think for reasons of the perception of -- of 


how this process is and -- and to be fair to 


people applying and so forth that we should 


avo-- avoid that potential -- that perception 


of bias. 


 DR. WADE: Understood. 


 DR. MELIUS: And so having -- and I get -- I 


don't know the numbers and I can't remember -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it is an appropriate point. 

 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 

 DR. ZIEMER: The contractor, in a sense, is 

critiquing NIOSH. So to the extent to which 


NIOSH chooses their critiquer (sic) -- 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- that would raise questions. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We -- I don't -- I don't know if 


we can even think about -- is it possible to 


have non-voting people on the board, like if we 

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said okay, we don't want NIOSH to even have a 


vote but we may want some input or something. 


But the contracting officer can advise us on 


that --


 DR. WADE: I can tell you right now -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- but that's a big -- the 


independence is an important issue. 


 DR. WADE: Right now the plan would be that I 


would chair --


MS. BLACK: Right. 


 DR. WADE: -- with several Board members and 


several other technical experts, to be 


determined. But we'll be very clear to you 


about that before we do it. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, well, we -- we need to -- I 


think we need to discuss that specifically as ­

- as we get -- get further along. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Other comments today, Board 


members? Yes, Wanda. 


 MS. MUNN: But that issue would be a matter of 


degree, certainly. It would appear logical 


that you would want the agency who was the 


primary agency to have a significant voice in 


the individual groups that they are going to be 


expected to interface with over a long period 

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of time. That's a -- you know, it's -- it 


would -- it would be -- it would be unwise to 


go too far the other direction, as well as 


going too far in the -- extremes are -- never 


serve us well. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 DR. MELIUS: Can I just com-- I think it's 


something we can work out. I would personally 


find that having someone from OCAS chairing 


that evaluation committee would be, you know, 


at least -- again, appear-- appearance, and it 


may be how -- may be a totally valid review and 


-- and, you know, Jim or whoever would do an 


excellent job, I -- that, but then, you know, 


people on the outside are going to interpret 


that, you know, based on -- on appearance or 


something --


 DR. WADE: Sure. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- and I think that would be, you 


know, troublesome for -- for -- for this 


program and -- and I think we have to also 


recognize there's a significant handicap in 


terms of trying to find other people that -- to 


do this. There are a limited number of health 


physicists within the federal government and -- 

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can do this and within the agency and -- and we 


-- we've struggled with that issue for a whi-- 


while, so it's -- how to balance sort of the 


technical input, the -- the bias and so forth 


and I think we -- I agree with Wanda, we have 


to reach a -- a balance and I think the best 


way to do that is to have some discussion of 


that and be open about it. 


 DR. WADE: I -- I'd be compelled to say also I 


think the technical evaluation panel last time 


did an excellent job. 


 DR. ZIEMER: When do we need to select that 


panel? 


MS. BLACK: When Dr. Wade gives me what we call 


a formal request for contract. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


MS. BLACK: He has to include a list. He has 


to tell me those that do have training and 


those that don't. 


 DR. WADE: Probably December --


MS. BLACK: Yeah, prob--


 DR. WADE: -- after our -- after our meeting. 


MS. BLACK: After the meeting he'll submit 


that. 


 DR. WADE: So we'll talk about that at -- 

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robust (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: So we'll need to know -- you know, 


if all 12 Board members are interested in being 


on the panel, then we'll have to make some 


decisions on that. If none are interested, 


then we'll have to do some arm-twisting. 


Somewhere between that, we may have a 


combination of volunteers or others who can be 


 DR. WADE: Some. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- compelled to -- to participate. 


 DR. WADE: It seems like people with experience 


would be wise to include. 


 DR. MELIUS: I -- I -- I concur. I -- also we 


can do like a bidding process, like, you know, 


when airlines overbooked, you know -- you know, 


will you take the five-day course, will you 


take the ten-day course -- we'll see how that ­

-


 DR. ZIEMER: I was going to --

 DR. MELIUS: -- if we narrow it down. 

 DR. ZIEMER: I was going to claim ignorance of 

having remembered taking the course nor its 


content, but... 


 DR. MELIUS: But my recollection was a one-day 

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course when I was in the government. Maybe 


I'll just (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: I think we're all a little slower 


nowadays. Okay, do we need anything further 


today then on that? I think we -- it's a good 


opening. Thank you very much, Florence, for 


getting us underway and our thoughts, and we'll 


proceed at our next meeting to take the -- the 


next steps to bring this to fruition. 


 DR. WADE: And we're ahead of schedule, but we 


want to stay there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Very good. 


MS. BLACK: Right, yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, it's time for a break. 


We'll take a roughly 30-minute break, or a 


rough 30-minute break, or something to that 


effect. Thank you. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 3:05 p.m. 


to 3:35 p.m.) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Translation of that coded message 


is that we're ready to resume our 


deliberations. Before we return to the agenda 


let me introduce several folks who've joined us 


this afternoon. John Nowack* who's with 


Senator Biggert's office -- John, where are you 

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-- welcome. Also Robert Stephan is here from 


Senator Obama's office and -- 


 DR. WADE: Robert's over there --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Robert --


 DR. WADE: -- against the wall. 


 DR. ZIEMER: There he is, okay. Couldn't see 


you in the glare there. And then Deb -- Deb 


Detmers from Representative Shimkus's office is 


here. 


 DR. WADE: Deb still might be working 


(unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we'll catch her later and 


we'll hear from Robert later. John, did you 


have a comment you wanted to make as we get 


underway? Okay, we're pleased to have you 


here, nonetheless. 


(Pause) 


SEC PETITION STATUS UPDATES
 

We have -- have a series of SEC petitions that 


we want to get updates on that are in various 


stages of review and consideration. They're 


listed on your agenda and we'll just go down 


through the list. 


BLOCKSON CHEMICAL
 

The first is Blockson Chemical, and we'll get a 

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report from the chair of the working group. 


And that's Wanda Munn, and she'll give us an 


update on the deliberations of the workgroup 


and path forward on Blockson. 


 MS. MUNN: The Blockson review from SC&A has 


been under consideration for our last couple of 


meetings. Most of the issues that they raised 


have been resolved. We met last on August the 


28th in Cincinnati. The largest outstanding 


issue was the issue of the path of the thorium 


through that chemical process. We've had 


several communications with respect to that in 


the interim, and NIOSH has issued a white paper 


with respect to an additional review of the 


literature on the finer points and with respect 


to the thorium itself. 


Just earlier this week, on the 4th, we met to 


discuss -- to get a verbal response from SC&A 


from their very cursory review of that -- that 


NIOSH white paper. They're going to take a 


look at it, give us a written report on their 


reactions to it so that NIOSH can have an 


opportunity to again respond to their 


reactions. That information we expect to 


discuss on a conference call which we will have 

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on November the 2nd. 


It is our goal on that call to reach a 


resolution of those last outstanding items and 


have a recommendation for the workgroup to 


bring to the Board at our next full meeting in 


January. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Wanda. And Robert, did 


you have some comments that you wanted to make 


relating to Blockson at this point? Thank you. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Thank you, Dr. Ziemer. Robert 


Stephan, S-t-e-p-h-a-n. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) hear you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: I'm -- make sure the -- is the 


mike up? 


 MS. MUNN: We're having a problem with our 


system, Robert. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Okay. How about now? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Good. 


 MS. MUNN: Better. 


 MR. STEPHAN: That works? Okay. Robert 


Stephan, S-t-e-p-h-a-n. Dr. Ziemer, a couple 


of things is -- one -- you know, we started 


from our office on this Blockson issue in terms 


of a public way last year this time, in 

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November. So I want to thank the working group 


and the Board for being so deliberative on the 


Blockson issue because this all could have been 


decided a year ago and -- and maybe in a way 


that we didn't have that much confidence in. 


So I feel like the -- you know, the effort that 


needs to be made is being made and -- and we 


are thankful for that. We look forward to the 


resolution that comes from this issue about 


thorium. And so our understanding is, if I 


heard correctly, that no vote today on the 


Blockson SEC, but you're going to hopefully 


vote -- if this thorium issue is resolved to 


everyone's satisfaction -- in January. Is that 


right? 


 MS. MUNN: That's our goal. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That would be the --


 MR. STEPHAN: That's the goal. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. That's, I think, the final 


issue to be addressed on Blockson. As far as 


we know, that will close all the issues and 


we'll be ready for action. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Okay. As we have said in the 


past and we will say in January, you know, from 


our perspective the issue before the Board -- a 

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major issue before the Board is do you accept 


the data being used from the Florida site and ­

- and applying that to Blockson. And our 


position is that -- that you should not. 
I 


mean I know NIOSH disagrees with that. We 


respect that wholeheartedly. If -- if you are 


a -- a NIOSH staffer, if you are a health 


physicist, if you're a Board member even, 


maybe, you know, it may pass muster that 


scientifically you believe it's okay to use 


data from one site and apply it to another. 


From our perspective, and I think the 


perspective of the claimants and the workers, 


that doesn't pass the smell test for them. And 


so that's the one thing we would continue to 


ask you to keep in mind is whether or not we 


can apply data from this Florida site to 


Blockson with integrity and have integrity in 


the process. So we -- we believe that you 


can't, and so that's the one thing I want you 


to keep in mind as you continue to go forward 


with this and -- and you head towards a vote in 


January. Okay? Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you, Robert, and certainly 


we'll remain cognizant of that issue as we 

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proceed. 


Board members, any other questions for the 


working group on Blockson, or comments? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I --

 DR. ZIEMER: Dr. Melius, you have a -- 

 DR. MELIUS: I just have one thing that's come 

up since the workgroup meeting this morning. 


want to sure that well before our January 


meeting that we've made available workgroup 


minutes and the -- the record of those meetings 


that are available to the petitioners and so 


forth. I don't believe that our last workgroup 


minutes have been -- are publicly available yet 


and I -- I think that's something we can talk 


tomorrow when --


 DR. ZIEMER: In fact that --


 DR. MELIUS: -- on that issue --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- it is on the agenda tomorrow. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- the agenda, but I just want to 


make sure that everyone's alerted to that as a 


-- as a issue in terms of scheduling for 


Blockson. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other comments on 


Blockson? 


 (No responses) 


I 
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FERNALD
 

Okay, let's proceed with Fernald and the chair 


of that workgroup is Brad Clawson. And Brad, 


give us a status report and a little bit of 


your idea of path forward there on Fernald. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Okay. And August 8th was the 


first time that we met as a working group. And 


as usual in the start of this, we had a lot of 


new information that working group nor -- nor 


SC&A have been able to review or go forth. We 


originally made it clear through the matrix, 


but with all this new information we wanted to 


be able to have time to be able to get it on 


the O drive, plus be able to review it. So at 


this time NIOSH has put -- it appears to be 


most of the information that was requested onto 


the O drive. We've got a working group 


scheduled for October 25th -- 24th, and we're 


going to continue on from there. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Any questions 


for this workgroup? 


 DR. WADE: We do have on the phone I believe 


Ray Beatty, who would like to make a comment -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: -- on Fernald. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: We'll hear from Ray Beatty then. 


 DR. WADE: He's a very nice gentleman who's 


spoken to us. 


 DR. ZIEMER: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


petitioner? 


 DR. WADE: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Ray Beatty I believe is one of the 


petitioners. 


UNIDENTIFIED: Or a representative. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Or -- is he a representative? 


(Whereupon, several Board members spoke 


simultaneously.) 


 DR. ZIEMER: Representing the petitioners, yes. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) Sandra Baldridge. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


(Whereupon, several Board members spoke 


simultaneously.) 


 DR. ZIEMER: No --


 DR. WADE: Okay, Sandra Baldridge, she's the 


petitioner. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, she can speak, sure. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: I have a question. At the 


working group NIOSH said that they would be 

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sending revisions of the site profile as they 


were developed. I was wondering if the Board 


has received any of those revisions. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, we'll -- Brad, 


can you or someone from NIOSH tell us the 


status of those revisions that they're -- are 


referred to? 


 MR. CLAWSON: Not -- not at this time that -- 


we haven't received anything on that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Are there some Fernald revisions 


that are in the pipeline that -- okay, Jim 


Neton is going to --


DR. NETON: I'm -- I'm not aware, although I'm 


not 100 percent certain, that there are any 


revisions that have been released recently. 


They're being worked on, but I don't think that 


we formally released any -- 


UNIDENTIFIED: No, they haven't. 


DR. NETON: -- updates at this point. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, the main thing will 


be to assure the petitioners that any revisions 


that are forthcoming are provided. So as far 


as we know, the petitioners should have 


everything that the Board has in terms of 


documents at this point. 

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DR. NETON: Yeah, we had just finished on and 


it's -- it's under -- the internal -- it's 


under review --


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, there is --


DR. NETON: -- but it's not released. And I 


would say that any revisions, as they come out, 


are automatically posted on our web site, so 


they will be available and then -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: As soon as they're released, 


they'll be available. 


DR. NETON: As soon as they're released, within 


a day or so, they're published on our web site. 


 DR. ZIEMER: When do you anticipate that? Is 


that -- is that imminent? Are we talking a few 


weeks or several months or -- just a -- I 


(unintelligible) --


DR. NETON: It's under internal review. It 


should be a matter of several weeks. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, so there should be something 


coming out -- we're expecting then by the end 


of October, perhaps. 


And here's Larry Elliott to add to that. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I haven't seen this document 


myself, but it -- it may not be released until 


we're through with the deliberation of the 

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working group, either. There may be some 


issues that are being discussed in that working 


group that could hold this document up, so -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, but the point is, there's 


not another --


 MR. ELLIOTT: There's not --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- document out there -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- there's not any revisions that 


have been produced --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- to date. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: And -- and I'm hesitant to say 


when we're going to produce this one that was 


just raised. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, and also we are making sure 


that the -- that the petitioners are notified 


of the workgroup meetings, I believe, and are 


given an opportunity to participate. 


 Now another comment from the petitioner. 


 MR. CLAWSON: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: (Unintelligible) to the 


revision information before it is posted on 


line. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Could you -- ask her to repeat 

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that, please. 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: (Unintelligible) I have access 


to the revision information before it is posted 


on line to the public. 


 DR. WADE: She would like access before it's 


posted. 


 DR. ZIEMER: None of us have access to the 


drafts before they're posted for the public. 


The Board doesn't -- these are agency 


documents. I believe that's correct. They are 


not available to the public or to the Board 


until they are posted. 


 DR. WADE: Could we call the petitioner when 


they're posted? 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 DR. WADE: Let's commit to that. 


 DR. MELIUS: But -- can I just comment? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 

 DR. MELIUS: I believe that if there were 

issues in the revi-- revised site profile that 


are relevant to the SEC evaluation, those'll 


come up as part of the discussion to the 


evaluation --


 DR. ZIEMER: Or the workgroup --

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202

 DR. MELIUS: -- the SEC workgroup's evalua-- so 


through that process, that information should 


be -- make that --


 DR. ZIEMER: That would be available -- 


 DR. MELIUS: -- (unintelligible) available -- 


available (unintelligible) -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- in the workgroup meetings. 


 DR. MELIUS: -- available to the petitioners 


and -- and to the public, so it -- it may not 


be the entire site profile revision, but it may 


be --


 DR. ZIEMER: The sort of issues, yes. 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, that's been our past 


practice and --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right, thank you. Okay, any 


further comment from the petitioner on this? 


(Pause) 


No. Thank you. 


 DR. WADE: What about Ray, is -- does Ray still 


want to make a comment? 


 (No responses) 


 Ray Beatty? 


(Pause) 


 MR. BEATTY: Yes, Dr. Ziemer? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes -- okay. 

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 MR. BEATTY: Hello? 

 DR. ZIEMER: Tell him to go ahead, yes. 

(Pause) 

 MR. BEATTY: Yeah, Dr. Ziemer, this is Ray 

Beatty calling on behalf of Fernald petition, 


and my comments are the fact that when we were 


at the last workgroup meeting there were 


several mentions of revisions that have 


occurred. And I'm not real sure that we have 


been afforded the privilege to see these 


revisions prior to the -- the next meeting, or 


when these revisions are being made, we -- we 


learn of them at the workgroup meetings. I 


just think that there ought to be an 


opportunity that the petitioner should get to 


review these prior to the workgroup meeting, if 


that is possible. Not so much the date of -- 


of putting them on line. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The day that they're put on line 


is basically the day they're released and the 


day that the workgroup gets them so that 


they're available to everybody at the same 


time. That would not necessarily coincide with 


a workgroup meeting, so -- in other words, if 


they're -- if they're available a month before 

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the workgroup meets, that's when you'll get 


them. Basically they will be available to you 


the very same time they're available to the 


workgroup. 


 MR. BEATTY: (Unintelligible) satisfactory, 


sir. Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you. Okay, let's move 


on then to -- oh. 


 DR. WADE: Larry needs to clarify. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, Larry --


 MR. ELLIOTT: I just want us to be clear here. 


 DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible) if I misstated 


that. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: No, no, I -- I don't think you 


did. I -- I want us to be clear. We want the 


petitioners to have all the available 


information that the working group's working 


with. But I think what Ray was speaking of may 


have been the matrices that the workgroup deals 


with rather than revisions to the site profile. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, the matrices will be 


available certainly. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: But the matrices, in some 


instances, have to be privacy -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible) 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: -- reviewed and redacted -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: (Unintelligible) 


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- I just want it known that 


that's not my responsibility to make happen 


quickly. I will put it on the web site and 


share it with the petitioners as soon as it's 


given to me in a redacted form. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, if you're talking about the 


revisions of the resolution matrices, insofar 


as that has Privacy Act information, that has 


to go through the redaction process. And Board 


members may have that sooner than the 


petitioners since they're permitted to have 


those documents. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Also too there was -- there was 


many things that we were going to have put on 


the O drive and we -- we need to make sure that 


they realize that that's not public -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: The O drive materials are 


materials that are not public materials, for a 


variety of reasons. 


 MR. CLAWSON: Right, and we had that --


 DR. ZIEMER: But insofar as those materials are 


-- can be made public, I guess they will also 


appear in a public forum, yeah. 

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 MR. CLAWSON: Right, we have --


 DR. ZIEMER: Insofar as we can legally make 


them available. 


 MR. CLAWSON: We had a lot of different 


information that was coming up -- our raw data, 


the OTIB-25, an Excel spreadsheet, Dr. Petty's* 


report, lab procedures and so forth, and 


several white papers that are going to be on 


the O drive. But -- but those are not -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Those aren't available -- 


 MR. CLAWSON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- at this point, yeah. Okay, 


thank you for clarifying that. 


 Yes, Jim. 


 DR. MELIUS: Again this is for discussion 


tomorrow, but I'd repeat that I -- I think we 


need to make sure that we make those available 


to the petitioners in a timely fashion. May 


not be contemporaneous with the -- the 


meetings, but in a way that they have access to 


them and a way -- can provide input and -- and 


comment on them, and certainly well before any 


decisions are -- are reached on a -- on a 


petition. And we've not been doing a good job 


of that up till now and we need to be doing 

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better, so... 


CHAPMAN VALVE


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Okay, then let's move 


on to Chapman Valve. We do want to hear from 


Sharon Block, who's on Senator -- is she on the 


line? We'll have to check and see. She's on 


Senator Kennedy's staff and wanted to make a 


brief statement prior to the Chapman Valve 


discussion. 


MS. BLOCK: Thank you. I appreciate the 


opportunity to make a -- a brief statement. 


just wanted to express the Senator's concern 


about, you know, the ongoing delay in making a 


decision on this petition. Obviously these 


petitioners have been waiting years, and I'm 


anxious to see if any progress has been made 


since the July meeting. We were somewhat 


concerned that -- that we didn't hear or that 


the Board didn't hear from the Department of 


Energy till September 25th, when I believe 


[Name Redacted]* letters went out at the 


beginning of August. 


And also I -- I have some questions about some 


documents that the constituents have provided 


to us suggesting some activity related to 


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Chapman Valve as far back as 1945, but maybe it 


makes more sense to hear the update on -- on 


what the Department of Energy and Department of 


Labor have come up with during this intervening 


time, and maybe then after that we can talk 


about whether these documents are -- are things 


that -- that the Board is aware of or not. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Sharon. We'll ­

- if you'll stay on the line you'll hear some 


updates, and then if you have additional 


comments, we'll be pleased to hear those. 


Board members, you should have the packet that 


Dr. Wade distributed -- actually two packets. 


One -- the first part of that packet is a 


letter from Dr. Wade to Dr. Worthington at DOE. 


Then there's a copy of Dr. Wade's letter to 


Pete Turcic of Labor. And then you'll see a 


copy of Pete Turcic's response relative to 


Chapman Valve, and a copy of Pat Worthington's 


response. And then there are some supporting 


documents as well in the other packet. 


And I think Pat Worthington is prepared to tell 


us ba-- basically I think what Labor has said 


is that if -- if Department of Energy comes up 


with additional information that would cause 

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them to change the -- the definition of the 


covered periods and so on, that they would then 


have to consider that. But let's hear from Pat 


Worthington on the status of what Energy is 


doing relative to Chapman Valve. Pat? 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Good afternoon, and thank you 


again --


 DR. ZIEMER: Tip the mike down, if you would. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Just a little bit? Can you 


hear me better now? 


 DR. ZIEMER: That's good. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Is that much better? Good 


afternoon, and we wanted to give you an update. 


If you have the package, it'll be a little bit 


more thorough than -- than my discussion. 


In terms of the time that it's taking us to 


answer the question, we certainly don't -- we 


want to be thorough. We want to be as complete 


as possible and to follow all the leads that we 


have so we can -- so that was one of the 


reasons that it took so long to do that. 


NIOSH asked us to -- to research whether or not 


contaminated manifolds which -- were 


transferred from Y-12 back to Chapman -- to the 


Deen* Street location, and we've be-- we're 

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working on that. We queried a number of 


sources and could not find documentation to 


support this activity. We have a lot of 


evidence and documents that it was clear that 


they were -- purchased valves and manifolds 


from Chapman Valve. 


We were also able to substantiate the War 


Department -- Navy had contracts with Chapman 


Valve. We also found documentation from the 


Navy that Deen Street did actually exist. 


Rad work was for Brookhaven, we did find that 


in the main Chapman location. We found no 


evidence of AEC work that took place at the 


Deen Street location. 


You have in your package the document that will 


list all the various sources that we used, and 


I had mentioned yesterday in an earlier 


discussion that we also engaged the Office of 


Legacy Management at the Department of Energy. 


They have experience and knowledge and depth in 


doing these kinds of things. They helped us to 


further research the various documents that you 


will see listed in the package here. 


I don't know if you have any other questions or 


if there are any specific things about this 

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particular activity, but I will -- will go now 


to sort of -- again, to re-emphasize the 


conclusion section of the report in terms of 


what we did find, that each known record 


collection in the custody of the agency with 


information about Chapman Valve Manufacturing 


Company has been thoroughly (unintelligible), 


and any documents identified were retrieved and 


reviewed. It's clear that they -- they did 


have numerous contracts, but we didn't find the 


evidence that we were specifically asked to 


look for by NIOSH. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Let me ask, Dr. Worthington, from 


DOE's point of view, do you then consider this 


issue closed or is it -- is there something 


ongoing yet on Chapman Valve? 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: We have nothing ongoing on 


Chapman Valve. This is the conclusion of our 


query. Unless there's some other specific 


question or document that we have not looked at 


or looked for, we would have to be given an 


additional source to request. We think we've 


looked at --


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: -- all the sources, based on 

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the information that we had. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And lacking that, then Labor's 


position would be as stated by -- 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: I would have to --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- Pete Turcic --


 DR. WORTHINGTON: -- defer to Labor --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I believe. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: -- on that. 


 DR. WADE: Jeff Kotsch. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Jeff is nodding yes. And so I 


think with that -- that was the only open issue 


on Chapman, was it not? 


Now as far as I know, the workgroup has -- has 


not met further because there was not any 


additional information for them to review. Is 


that correct, Dr. Poston? 


 DR. POSTON: Yes, that's correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So basically on Chapman we are 


back to where we were originally, as far as the 


workgroup's recommendation was concerned. 


Let me ask Sharon if she has any additional 


questions at this point. 


MS. BLOCK: I do actually have a question 


because I believe it was a constituent had made 


available to us some documents related to 

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Chapman Valve, as I said before, dating back to 


1945. So I guess I would have a question for ­

- for Dr. Worthington as to whether the 


Department has seen these and -- and whether 


that influences their decision that there's 


nothing else to look at with regard to Chapman 


Valve. These are Stone and Webster Corporation 


correspondence to the district engineer at Oak 


Ridge, and they refer to contracts with dates 


1944 to 1945, and the contract numbers are the 


same as the contract numbers listed -- let's 


see, it's in the last page of the attachment on 


Dr. Worth-- Dr. Worthington's September 25th 


letter, the DOE environmental management file 


room list that lists some contracts for Chapman 


Valve with the dates 1948, but these Stone and 


Webster documents that -- that were made 


available to us have that same contract number 


but dates 1944-'45. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, stand by. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: We would actually need to see 


that document. If we could -- could get it we 


could cross-reference against the list that we 


have and we could get back to you on that. So 


if someone can make that available to us, we 

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would -- we would certainly look at it and make 


sure it's something that was included in our 


search. It didn't seem obvious from the quick 


list that I was looking at here. 


 DR. ZIEMER: So it's not clear that you've seen 


the document that they refer to -- 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: That she's talking about, 


yes, that's correct, so we would need to look 


at that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Comment? Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I guess there's other 


information, too. The interview -- I mean the 


main source of this, you know, concern about 


the Deen Street facility came from an interview 


conducted by SC&A, and in that interview the 


individual interviewed identified a few people 


from the Manhattan Project or Stone and Webster 


-- at least that's my understanding. And I 


think -- you know, I don't know if that thread 


has been pulled at all, you know, to see if 


there's any documents that exist for these -- 


from these individuals or... 


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at the information from the affidavits or 


interviews to help us target our searches? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: We certainly looked at that 


information, used it to help focus our review 


and to come up with the list of documents that 


we felt we needed to look at. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay, and -- and I think she also 


indicated in the interview that they received 


parts from, and I -- I don't -- I -- I know you 


haven't -- just haven't been able to find or 


confirm that, is that what you -- what your 


investigation's showing? Received parts from 


Y-12, not -- not only made parts for -- you 


know, and they received parts from... 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) comment on that. 


 MS. CANO: Right, right. We actually had our 


Legacy Management staff research, and what they 


were able to find was that there were Navy 


contracts for Deen Street facility. However, 


in querying they looked for Y-12 connection, 


ORNL connection in regards to anything going 


back to Chapman. They could not find any 


documentation to substantiate that. 

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There were many contracts where Oak Ridge did 


purchase valves and manifolds from Chapman. 


But actually going back to Chapman, we couldn't 


find that information. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: We believe that we have 


pulled the string on all of them, but if 


there's some specific information or specific 


reference that you're questioning or you 


believe was not included, please make us aware 


of that. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Well, it appears that the 


only -- the only possible one is this one that 


Sharon has just raised that might be 


interpreted as an open item yet. This Board 


was deadlocked, as it were, on -- on the 


Blockson (sic) issue. 


 DR. WADE: Chapman Valve. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Or Chapman Valve issue, and I -- 


it's not obvious to the Chair that we would be 


well-served to take another vote today, 


particularly if there's some question on this 


particular document. But let me hear from the 


Board. What is your pleasure? 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Well, we do have individuals 

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back there in -- in Germantown, so if they make 


this available -- if you tell us the number, 


we'll certainly double-check that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, Dr. Poston -- oh, excuse me. 


 MS. CANO: Can I say something else? In 


regards to the contract, it is possible on the 


'45 that it might have been for purchasing of 


valves or manifolds. But in regard to actual 


rad work, that's something we'd have to take a 


look at. We do have -- we have established the 


'48 time period for the Brookhaven work, but in 


regards to the '45 contracts, that's something 


we'd have to look at. It could be just for the 


purchase of, you know, manifolds or valves. 


But again, we'd -- we'd have to look at that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Dr. Poston? 


 DR. POSTON: I just have a procedural question. 


Since the period we were considering, the 


working group was considering, started in 1948, 


do we have to extend the time period to -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, not unless there's evidence 


that it should be extended. I think that was 


the question at this point. 


 DR. POSTON: But it is clear -- I participated 


in those interviews and it is clear that at 

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least one, and perhaps more folks, did testify 


that there were manifolds coming back from Oak 


Ridge into the facility by rail, and they were 


transferred to truck and then taken to another 


facility. They were not -- as far as we could 


tell from the interviews, not taken into the 


Chapman Valve's facility under -- that's in 


question, but there's -- the testimony in the 


interviews made that clear that they did come. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Uh-huh. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 MS. CANO: Right, and that's something we'd 


have to do is we would have to change the 


covered time period. We -- if we could find 


that information, we'd provide that to 


Department of Labor. But the question that 


came in from NIOSH was to substantiate whether 


or not there were contaminated manifolds from 


Y-12 back to Chapman, and so that was what we 


were querying. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


THE COURT REPORTER: Could I get your name, 


please? 


 MS. CANO: It's Regina Cano. 

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THE COURT REPORTER: Spell the last name, 

please. 

 MS. CANO: C-a-n-o. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Other comments, Board 

members? What is your pleasure here, do you 


wish to postpone further action till we trace 


this last document down, or do you wish to -- 


 DR. POSTON: Of course as the working group 


chair I'd like to resolve this issue, but right 


now we're deadlocked on the recommendations 


from the working group to the Board. 


 DR. ZIEMER: The deadlock has the effect of 


turning down the petition, in -- in effect. 


 DR. POSTON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Huh? 


 DR. WADE: In essence, yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: In essence. So unless there is 


evidence that would cause Board members to 


change their votes, then that's where we are 


and the Chair's suggesting perhaps this 


additional piece of evidence might have some 


impact. Otherwise, I -- unless someone wishes 


to call for a new vote, why -- 


 DR. POSTON: Yeah. Well, this was just passed 


around. I haven't had a chance to read it, 

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obviously. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 DR. POSTON: I got it a couple of minutes ago, 


so perhaps we can talk about this tomorrow if 


we get a chance, or... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Or at the next meeting. Okay. 

 DR. POSTON: Or at the next meeting. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Jim Lockey. 

 MR. GRIFFON: And I don't know that the 

petitioners have seen this document, either, so 


we -- we have that same question of -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, Jim Lockey? 


 DR. LOCKEY: And can -- can the additional 


information that the petitioner has be 


researched by Department of Labor by tomorrow, 


or is that not possible. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Department of Energy? 


 DR. LOCKEY: Department of Energy, excuse me. 


 DR. ZIEMER: That -- I think that's putting a 


fair burden on them to try to research that in 


one day. Plus if the petitioners have not seen 


any of this, that may be an issue as well. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Well --


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Robert? 


 MR. PRESLEY: Did you all check any of the 

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shipping documents, or were you able to find 


any shipping documents at Y-12 where these 


things did go back or where they did drop -- 


where they were received down there, what they 


were? 


 MS. CANO: My unders-- my understanding is that 


we found purchase orders for the manifolds and 


valves, so they were going from Chapman to Y12, but nothing going from Y-12 back to 


Chapman. 


 MR. PRESLEY: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim? 


 DR. MELIUS: Well, you've sat down, I'll -- 


have another question. I mean does your 


investigation include going to the field at all 


and asking people questions or something? I --


is this all just a paper exercise in 


Germantown? I'm just trying to understand what 


you -- what you do, and I'm sorry, I missed the 


session yesterday and I may have -- may have 


talked about this. I'm -- does... 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Our responsibility was to 


retrieve the documents, research and look for 


the documents. We certainly take the 


information that we get, if there've been 

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witnesses or affidavits or whatever that would 


lead us and help us to focus our -- our actual 


document reviews in -- in a better way. But 


we have not, Gina, been engaged in any 


interviews. We've been looking -- we were 


asked to look for documentation and so we used 


the in-- the information we received about 


witnesses, workers, to help us to focus those 


reviews, to help target where to look for these 


actual documents. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 

 DR. MELIUS: Thank you. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 DR. WADE: I would like us to spend just a 


moment and be very specific about what's going 


to happen next so we don't lose this again. As 


I understand it, Senator Kennedy's 


representative has documents that have been 


provided to them that raise issues about the 


period -- 1942? 


 MS. MUNN: '44 and '45, I thought. 


 DR. WADE: -- '45, so we need to make sure that 


those documents get to DOE. And then we need 


to be clear about our expectation of what DOE 


will do with those documents. I think a minute 

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spent on that would be -- would be wise. 


 DR. ZIEMER: My understanding is that DOE would 


examine those to determine if they impacted on 


the covered period. Is this the issue we're 


looking at? Or is it both the covered period 


and whether or not some manifolds actually went 


to the site or left contamination at the site 


during the transfer, I suppose is part of the 


issue. Perhaps both of those, and the -- the 


transfer part might be easy to come -- more 


easily identified than this contamination 


issue, which would -- was there an indication 


that these were contaminated, John? 


 DR. POSTON: There was no indication that they 


were contaminated, as far as I remember. 


Arjun's here and John's here, maybe they 


remember. But during the site survey, when the 


site was being decommissioned, there was at 


least one sample that was identified as 


slightly enriched uranium. And all the 


documents show that what they did at the 


facility was machine uranium metal that was not 


enriched, so --


 DR. ZIEMER: So the question of where did that 


come from. 

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 DR. POSTON: Yes. And when we discussed this 


with folks at the facility, they said well, we 


did have these manifolds come in. And then I 


guess the -- we started putting two and two 


together and said well, these manifolds 


probably came from Y-12, probably came from the 


Calutrons, and that could be the source of the 


enriched -- slightly enriched uranium. 


There's also a question of whether it really 


was slightly enriched uranium or not, or was a 


false positive. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 MS. CANO: I have a question for clarification 


purposes on our part. It was -- it's our 


understanding what -- DOE's role is to 


designate the AWE, which we have with Chapman 


Valve. We were under the understanding that we 


were trying to figure out whether or not Deen 


Street performed radiological work, and that's 


the basis for AWE designation. And what we've 


come up with basically is that we were not able 


to substantiate that that actually took place, 


that the Navy actually did have contracts with 


the Deen Street facility. And based on our 


search, we could not find any documentation to 

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lead us back to Deen Street pertaining to 


radiation -- rad work. Chapman is designated 


as an AWE from '48 to -- I just blanked on it ­

- beginning in '48 based on work done at 


Brookhaven, and it was -- it was uranium. And 


so I'm -- I'm -- I guess what I'm thinking is 


that some of the contracts that they might have 


was for the purchase of maybe manifolds or 


valves, which indeed were just steel-based. 


They were not radioactive whatsoever. So I'm 


just trying to figure out what -- what we -- I 


mean we can look at the document. We will --


we will do that. But it's just trying to 


understand what else you want us to do. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, thank you for raising that 


point. I don't think we were asking about Deen 


Street per se because that would not affect 


this petition. 


 DR. POSTON: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: This petition is unique to the 


main -- other facility. And I think -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Unless that was considered part 


of the Chapman facility, that's -- that's a 


question, too, (unintelligible) -- 


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would be a separate facility, as I understand 


the way these get defined. So even if it's 


part of Chapman, it would require a separate 


petition, I believe -- as I understand it -- if 


that were the case. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Well, somebody explain that to 


me. I'd like to understand that. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: It's my understanding the Deen 


Street facility is a Chapman Valve facility. 


 DR. POSTON: Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Right. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Okay? But the Chapman Valve 


facility that's been designated an AWE, I don't 


know which street it's on -- I don't recall 


that -- but that is the contiguous AWE 


facility. Deen Street is not part of that. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And even if they had received some 


material, it doesn't automatically become part 


of this because of physical location, or would 


it? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: What -- what we asked DOE to do 


was to look at the Deen Street facility and 


determine whether or not it should become an 


AWE. And the evaluation report you have before 


you for this SEC petition only deals with the 

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Chapman Valve AWE facility. So we were trying 


to seek out from -- from DOE whether or not 


Deen Street should be designated an AWE in of 


itself. 


 DR. ZIEMER: If it were, does that affect this 


petition? That's sort of what I'm asking. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: It would not. It would have to 


be another petition for that facility. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. So the outcome of this 


question doesn't, in a sense, affect this 


petition. Mark, do you think it -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, I guess I'm going a little 


uncertain, but --


 DR. ZIEMER: Unless the -- unless the 


contamination issue --


 MR. GRIFFON: My quest--


 DR. ZIEMER: -- enters into it. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah, my question was if -- and 


this gets a little murky for me between DOL and 


NIOSH's function in -- you know, defining the ­

- but if -- in a normal situation, if NIOSH 


finds that the time period for a petition 


should be extended, then they'll extend it. 


Now here the time period's set by DOL already. 


Right? 

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 MR. ELLIOTT: The time period of a covered 

facility --

 MR. GRIFFON: Of a cov-- I'm not talking about 

a covered facility, though. I -- DOL 


establishes that, I understand that. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Yes. 


 MR. GRIFFON: But in an SEC, if you find reason 


to believe that, you know, you should extend it 


longer than the -- than that identified in the 


petitioner (sic), you'll -- you'll self-


identify that sometimes. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: If it's within the bounds of a 


covered facility designation, yes -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: So here we have --


 MR. ELLIOTT: -- we can do that. 


 MR. GRIFFON: -- a circumstance where we're 


saying, you know, there may be other work prior 


to the defined time period -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: But the AWE does not cover 1945. 


It starts at '48. And I'm not sure when this ­

-


 MR. GRIFFON: But it's the same facility, and 


if DOL changed their designation, then the same 


-- I don't know, I -- I... 


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clear them up one at a time. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: There seems to be information that ­

- that goes to the issue that the period should 


be extended from '48 back to '45. That 


information needs to be looked at by DOE and a 


judgment made, so that's one issue we've heard 


today. 


The second issue we've got is that there's this 


elevated reading that appears that might have 


resulted from something on its way from 


somewhere to Deen Street being off-loaded at 


the Chapman Valve covered facility, and that's 


the other part of the issue. 


What we need to hear from DOE, if this 


information comes from the good Senator's 


staff, then you can look at it and determine 


whether or not it goes to the fact that the 


covered period should be extended back to '45. 


That's something you can do? 


 MS. CANO: We would be happy to take a look at 


it. In regards to the DOE designation, DOE has 


already designated Chapman Valve. In regards 


to extending the covered time period, that's 


something that Department of Labor would have 

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to -- to make that decision. 


 DR. ZIEMER: But they would do that based on a 


recommendation from you, or from whom? 


 MS. CANO: They -- Jeff? 

 DR. WADE: Well, let's --

 MS. CANO: Sorry, I can't speak for Department 

of Labor. 

 DR. WADE: So if someone presents a bit of 

evidence that -- that argues strongly that 


there -- that the period should be extended to 


1945 --


 MR. KOTSCH: Right, that's --


 DR. WADE: -- do you act unilaterally on that? 


 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, right, Department of Labor's 


responsible under the program for the -- 


additional covered period, if you want to say. 


Usually it's not on an individual basis based 


on evidence provided by, you know, a particular 


claimant. But yes, we extend -- or determine 


the covered periods. 


In -- in the case of like Deen Street, if that 


were an issue, DOE has the responsibility to 


determine that that's an AWE, and then we would 


determine the covered period for that 


particular facility. 

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 DR. WADE: But that hasn't happened to this 


point. 


 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah. 


 DR. WADE: So what we have is the information 


from Senator Kennedy's staffer that potentially 


goes to 1945, so that needs to come to you to 


look at. 


 MR. KOTSCH: Yeah, I mean I would recommend it 


gets sent -- gets sent to Pete then. 


 DR. WADE: Send it to... 


 MR. KOTSCH: Send it to Pete Turcic. 


 DR. WADE: Send it to Pete Turcic. So if that 


information gets to you, then that's an action 


item you would look at and could report back 


on? 


 MR. KOTSCH: Yes --


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 MR. KOTSCH: -- I guess (unintelligible). 


 DR. WADE: So that's one resolved. Jim? 


 DR. MELIUS: I also believe that there are 


people that -- former workers from the facility 


that have information from that, and I would 


hope -- about these early contracts, and I 


would hope that somehow DOE can manage to 


interview them or obtain information from them. 

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Our contractor, SC&A, has talked to them, I 


believe. I'm not sure if the -- the workgroup 


talked to all of them or whether NIOSH staff 


has, but -- but certainly that information can 


be made available and I think can provide some 


helpful information for this follow-back. 


 DR. WADE: And this is --


 DR. ZIEMER: Arjun, did you have a comment on 


that, or John? 


 DR. WADE: Arjun was trying to get out. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Oh, no -- no comment? 


 DR. POSTON: Well, the -- the workgroup -- the 


workgroup in its entirety did not participate, 


but I did participate with Arjun and John. And 


Arjun wrote a report which was the results of 


the interviews that was distributed to the 


workgroup, so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: Arjun? 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Dr. Ziemer, the only thing I 


was going to say is that the published 


interview is redacted for privacy, and there 


might be a couple of things in the redactions 


that might be helpful to the Department of 


Energy, and we'd be happy to make that 


available. I don't know what the process is, 

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but --


 DR. ZIEMER: They can have an unredacted -- 


 DR. MAKHIJANI: Do you -- do you have the -- 


I'm not sure, you have the unre-- okay. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. 


 DR. WADE: So to get our agencies straight, 


though, the information -- and this information 


is going to the Department of Labor to look at 


the issue of extending the covered period. 


Okay. 


Now we still have the contaminated manifold 


issue to deal with if we want to. Or is that 


done now in everyone's mind? 


 MR. GRIFFON: Well, it's not done. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, I'm not sure what we'd do 


with that, other than -- that -- that issue was 


the one that triggered this whole question, 


where did the U-235 come from. Would that in 


any way affect the Chapman Valve findings, the 


fact that there was this contamination at the 


transfer point? 


 MR. GRIFFON: It -- it only affects it in -- in 


my -- in my mind, anyway, it only affects it in 


that it's something that we -- we can't 


explain. And I agree with John that -- that we 

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-- you know, we -- we've also heard that it 


could be due to laboratory error. I mean it 


could be within the error of the lab. But it's 


something that we haven't been able to explain. 


And with this additional -- very detailed 


interview, I might add, of -- of the accounts 


of materials coming from Y-12, it -- it raises 


the question of was there something else going 


on at Chapman. I mean we -- we didn't even 


know about Deen Street -- I still think of Deen 


Street as part of the Chapman facility, quite 


frankly, just wasn't known when they put -- 


when DOL put their site list together. But now 


this raises a question of were there other 


activities. I think if we knew what they were 


and they were -- they were dealing with some 


slightly enriched uranium and that was it, I 


don't think it would change the conclusion. 


But it just raises that question of what else 


went on there and can we make sure we have 


covered the breadth of the operations that were 


going on at Chapman. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, it appears to me that we've 


gone as far as we can today on this, that we 


need to hear the outcomes -- 

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 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- and then go from there. Larry, 


you have an additional -- 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I just want to be --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- comment or --


 MR. ELLIOTT: I want to be --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- advice for us? 


 MR. ELLIOTT: I want to be clear for the record 


that we have provided Department of Energy and 


Department of Labor the non-redacted 


information that has been assembled both from 


our levels of effort and SC&A's levels of 


effort, and we've provided that to them in an 


unredacted form. 


 The Deen Street facility goes to whether or not 


it should be designated as an AWE, and that 


goes to DOE to decide. 


The extension of time for the current AWE at 


Chapman Valve goes to DOL, and I think if -- 


you're right, if the -- if Senator's staffer 


can provide that information to DOL, they can 


look at that and determine whether or not the 


covered period for the current AWE is 


appropriate and accurate, or needs to be 


adjusted. 

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I don't know what you do about the Deen Street 


facility from this point. I think DOE is still 


looking -- as you've heard them, they're still 


looking for information that would tell them 


whether or not it should be an AWE or not. 


That's -- I just wanted to (unintelligible) to 


say to you that we have given up everything 


that we have, in an unredacted form, to the 


right Departments for the right decision-


making. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, 


Brad? 


 MR. CLAWSON: Well, and I just wanted to go 


back to some of the comments that have been 


made by some of the petitioners and so forth, 


my understanding of it is they -- they actually 


felt that the Deen Street was just part of 


Chapman Valve, it was doing another process of 


Chapman Valve. And this is -- this is what has 


-- I -- I guess convoluted some of the things 


that have gone on there, but in the 


petitioners' eyes also, too, Deen Street was 


just part of Chapman Valve and they had 


processes that were going on and they were 


showing -- they were telling us, you know, and 

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they -- they've been pretty good to be able to 


show us so forth and that -- that's where I 


think some of the confusion comes in. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Jim Lockey, do 


you have an additional comment? No, okay. 


 MR. GRIFFON: I only had one -- one last thing. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. 


 MR. GRIFFON: One -- one last thing, a little ­

- it was the other aside that we asked about 


follow-up on and that was the documentation 


from -- from later activities, the -- when this 


facility was cleaned up and when they disposed 


of it did anyone find any more records related 


to the cleanup process or the waste that was 


shipped or any of that information. I -- it 


might be in your report. I'm glancing at it 


while I'm trying -- while we're trying to talk 


here, but did DOE or NIOSH find anything 


related to the cleanup -- I think it was '90 or 


'92 when they -- they did the cleanup process. 


We have the -- the cover report, but is there 


any detail. And my curiosity on this is if we 


see a certain number of grams of U-235 


manifested, that at least supports this 


question of was there, you know, really U-235 

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there -- maybe it supports it, anyway. 


DR. NETON: We don't have any information to 


add on that time period. That's still listed 


as reserved, I think, in the evaluation report. 


It was not specifically evaluated as part of 


this SEC petition. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Oh, but I had asked for the 


information so that it could maybe answer some 


questions about quantity and type of materials 


DR. NETON: Well, we don't have any more 


information to offer at this time. 


 MR. GRIFFON: Okay. All right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: This Board is not in a position of 


tasking either the Department of Energy or the 


Department of Labor to do things, but I -- 


 MR. GRIFFON: Yeah. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I do want to ask if both Labor 


and -- and Energy would be willing, if you get 


these doc-- I think you're going to get the 


documents from the Senator's office, and if 


you'd be willing to report to us at our next 


meeting what you find from those documents, and 


if it has any impact on Blockson, either in 


terms --

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 DR. WADE: Chapman. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- or Chapman, I get -- get off of 


Blockson here -- Chapman in terms of either 


time period or the -- or the Deen Street 


location, that would be helpful to us. 


Basically this is going to leave things hanging 


for another meeting. But in the absence of 


that, I think we're going to be at the same 


place anyway. We're not going to resolve that 


today, and perhaps this additional information 


will help us come to some kind of closure if 


you'd be willing to at least tell us what 


you've learned 'cause clearly the Senator has 


indicated that they're going to provide this -- 


these documents to you. So I assume you'll 


need to follow up, in any event, since the 


Senator has asked that that be done. 


 DR. WADE: The Board has a call on December 6th 


as the next time the Board will be together. 


 DR. ZIEMER: If -- if that information is 


available by then, that would be good. 


Otherwise we'll have to wait to our full 


meeting. 


 DR. WADE: Which is January 8th, 9th, and 10th 


of next year. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Jim, you have a comment 

here? No. 

 DR. MELIUS: My only comment is that it's not 

clear from the DOE report that -- that the 


interviews and so forth that NIOSH made 


available to them were reviewed. They may 


have, but just in glancing through, I don't -- 


I don't see that and so... 


 DR. ZIEMER: But that could be clarified. 


 DR. MELIUS: May be confusion, but again, all 


the reason to let's have some follow-up and 


give that some time. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And Jim Lockey? 


 DR. LOCKEY: Just for my own clarification, by 


the next meeting are we going to get additional 


information about Deen Street? 


 DR. ZIEMER: What I've asked is that both -- if 


both Labor and DOE are willing to tell us what 


the outcome is when they see the documents from 


Senator Kennedy's office, if that -- in their 


judgment -- has any impact on either the 


location designation, Deen Street, or the time 


of the covered period. 


 DR. LOCKEY: Okay, so if there's -- if there's 


no additional information on Deen Street, then 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Deen Street is -- as I understand 


it, is not a covered facility. Is that -- is ­

- it's -- it's differentiated, even though some 


of the workers may regard it as part and 


parcel, Brad, of the same thing, apparently 


it's not covered as a physically separate 


entity -- as I understand it, and I think 


that's how NIOSH understands it and -- and 


Energy, as well. And Labor, as well. Okay. 


So --


 DR. WADE: But Dr. Lockey's -- looks puzzled. 


I think the issue is if there were things going 


on at Deen Street that caused radioactive 


material to be shipped through the covered 


facility, that's important for us to know. 


 DR. LOCKEY: I think that -- you said it much 


more articulately than I could. I think that's 


the question and I think -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: That's what we're hoping to learn, 


if that in fact, in Energy's opinion, changes 


the status of Deen Street -- if they're able to 


make that judgment from the documents that they 


get. 


 DR. LOCKEY: I think the real question is 

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what's -- what's really happening at Deen 


Street. That's really the most important 


question. Then a second question, do we extend 


it back to 1945, and that's a -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, those are the -- 

 DR. LOCKEY: -- DOE/DOL decision. 

 DR. ZIEMER: -- two issues, right. 

 DR. WADE: The two issues. 


 DR. ZIEMER: We're saying if these documents 


shed light on either of those two issues, then 


that would be helpful to us, perhaps in coming 


to some kind of closure on this. 


With that I'm -- I think we're going to move on 


unless someone has some additional words of 


wisdom. 


DOW CHEMICAL


 DR. WADE: Dow. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Dow Chemical -- this is Dow 


Madison, more specifically. We have some 


documents -- Lew, can you step us through the 


documentation that -- the response to your 


inquiries? 


 DR. WADE: No, it was your inquiry, but -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, my -- okay, I --


 DR. WADE: -- that the Board wrote to the 

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Secretary of HHS. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Tell me what I did, will you? 


 DR. WADE: Well, you did well, as always, and 


you led the way. The Board -- the Board, under 


Dr. Ziemer, wrote to the Secretary of HHS 


asking the Secretary to -- to interact with the 


other agencies relative to the questions that 


had been raised on Dow Madison. The Secretary 


asked Dr. Gerberding, the Director of CDC, to 


reply to the Board's letter, which she has now 


done and that's in your materials. 


I also am aware of the fact that our colleagues 


from DOE are here to make some additional 


comments about Dow Madison. Dr. Branche is 


passing out the -- the handouts that you 


brought to us. And I also believe that our 


friends from the Hill wish to make some 


comments concerning Dow Madison. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, we can start with Robert 


Stephan again. Robert, do you want to -- 


 DR. WADE: And Deb Detmers. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- make your remarks now -- or 


Deb, or both? Do you want to comment at this 


point? 


 MR. STEPHAN: We're just going to come up 

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together, but I think it may be more useful to 


just go through the discussion about the site 


and then we'll comment -- 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Sure. 


 MR. STEPHAN: -- after. If our -- if our 


comment is relevant as your discussion goes, 


we'll jump up, but I think we want to hear the 


discussion first, if you don't mind. 


 DR. WADE: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, one of the -- the issues on 


-- the Dow issue really had to do with the 


extension of the covered period, and there was 


-- the petitioners raised some issues which 


we're all aware of that suggest that perhaps it 


needed to be looked into. And so the request 


went to the Secretary's office to ask both 


Labor and Energy to look at certain documents 


that might be considered in -- in changing the 


covered period. So we -- we did basically get 


replies from Pete Turcic and Pat Worthington, 


and the letter from -- from Dr. Gerberding on 


behalf of the Secretary indicating that the 


request had been made to Labor and DOE. 


Labor has basically indicated that they 

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currently are not in a position to change 


anything unless Department of Energy so 


designates, as I understand it -- or so 


suggests. And Department of Energy has been 


looking into some of the documents. I think 


that's still in process. And Pat, I don't know 


if you have any comments on -- tell us where 


you are -- it's my understanding this is still 


ongoing. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: It is still ongoing. We want 


to make sure that we do the best job we can in 


terms of answering the questions. We've 


engaged other organizations to help us out. 


We've actually -- we went to the FBI to ask 


them to look at those documents. They have 


some unique techniques, I understand, to be 


able to -- to see and -- and describe to us 


what's there. We have not yet heard back from 


them, but we're pleased that they accepted the 


assignment and they would do this for us on 


behalf of the workers. 


Also we've engaged NNSA within the Department 


of Energy for them to explain their process to 


make sure that we understand what was going on 


at the various sites to see if that could in 

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fact provide some additional insights. 


 We've also contacted the -- the lawyers from 


the contractor's side of the house, from Dow 


Chemical, and we -- we've had some exchange and 


we're -- we're hoping to be able to close with 


them to get more information from that side. 


And also there were a number of FOIA requests 


related to these activities. We -- we 


expedited those things and also looked at -- at 


those documents, as well. And so we are at 


this point still trying to get closure and we 


hope to hear back from the working group, with 


NNSA, back with the lawyers, and also to see if 


there's something on those documents that will 


give us some -- some real insights. And so as 


soon as we have that, we will report back to 


everybody. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And the timetable on that is 


probably uncertain. 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: It's uncertain because -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: We will hear from you -- 


 DR. WORTHINGTON: -- the FBI didn't --


 DR. ZIEMER: -- when you have something. 

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 DR. WORTHINGTON: -- give us a schedule. Yes. 


Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Board members, do you have any 


questions regarding this issue? We don't have 


an outstanding action to take on Dow unless the 


time period is extended -- 


 DR. WADE: Correct. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- in which case then that would 


have to be considered. So this is, in a sense, 


kind of a pending issue till we see what 


Department of Energy learns from this 


investigation. And again, we appreciate the 


input that -- that your office has had, Pat, to 


follow up on this, to pull -- pull the strings 


and give us some level of -- of confidence as 


to what was or wasn't done, so -- and now we'll 


hear from both Robert and Deb. 


 MS. DETMERS: Yeah, hi, welcome to Illinois. 


I'm Deb Detmers, district director for 


Congressman Shimkus -- and I'll spell that for 


you, it's Debra, D-e-b-r-a, Detmers, D-e-t-m-er-s. And I'd like to introduce two people that 


rode up with me this morning, Homer Simmons -- 


Homer, you want to stand up? And Homer is a 


former employee of Dow who's had a pending 

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claim since 2001. And also Mr. Bill Hoppe -- 


you want to stand up, Bill? -- who's also had a 


pending claim with Dow Chemical since 2001, so 


I do want to state that they do have pending 


claims for six years. I do want to point that 


out. Yes, that is six years that they've had 


pending claims, and we've been working on it. 


Neither of them will qualify under the current 


SEC as both of them started working about six 


months after the time frame, so neither of them 


are qualified under the pending claim. 


Just one comment that Robert and I do want to 


bring up, and I think both of us do want to 


bring this up, is -- we do have a question 


about worker testimony. We have provided a 


great number of documents to this Board and to 


Department of Energy. And these are documents 


that we have produced ourselves, including the 


document that's now at the FBI. These are 


documents that, through Dr. McKeel's efforts 


and through our office, working with Senator 


Obama's office -- and it's really taken a 


village and the law firm that we work with -- 


that works with us on a pro bono basis -- we 


have provided boxes and boxes of documents, and 

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all of these documents have not gotten us to 


the point that we need to be on for this 


extended period. 


What we do have -- 11 workers, at a minimum, 


that have provided worker testimony that all 


matches. There is no worker testimony that 


says anything different than what those 11 


workers say. We have worker testimony that 


we've taken. We have worker testimony that the 


working group has seen. At what point -- I 


guess the question comes -- do we believe 


worker testimony? At what point does worker 


testimony get taken at face value, and who 


makes that final decision? That is, I guess, 


my stan-- my question. 


I do want to state one more time, these guys 


rode out with me to Ohio. They did not ride 


out with me to Denver, but they did ride out 


with me to Ohio. They're here again with me in 


Naperville. They come and see me all the time, 


and there are lots of guys like them, with 


cancer, that I see every day. And my question 


is, at what point do we take worker testimony ­

- that's not been contradicted -- at face 


value? And that's my question. 

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 MR. STEPHAN: That is -- that is exactly the 


issue from Senator Obama's perspective. He's 


in total agreement with Congressman Shimkus. 


But to take that just a step further, at what 


point do we take worker testimony when there is 


no document to disprove what they say? And 


it's an important distinction between no 


document which proves what they say and no 


document which disproves what they say. And 


so, you know, our understanding -- correct us 


if we're wrong -- is that the whole purpose of 


the SEC is that when there are no documents, 


there's -- there's no, you know, exposure data, 


there's no monitoring data to do a DR, that 


then we go the -- do go the SEC route. So here 


we are where we have a document being examined 


by the FBI. Who knows what the conclusion will 


be. Either it will -- either it will prove our 


point or it will simply not prove what the 


workers have said. It is not a document that's 


going to be a smoking gun to show that what the 


workers have said is not accurate. 


So, Dr. Ziemer, we would, you know, inquire to 


the Board how -- how can we resolve this 


question? Because in the Senator's mind and 

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the Congressman's mind, this is not a question 


that simply can continue to be resolved on a 


case by case basis. What -- what is the 


guiding, you know, theory that the Board uses 


to evaluate worker testimony? Is it -- is it a 


decision that simply is up to each Board member 


and we come to a vote and we see how it's 


evaluated? Or is it something that the Board 


can -- can reach consensus and say when we have 


worker testimony and it cannot be disproved by 


NIOSH, DOE or DOL, then -- then the Board will 


take the worker testimony at face value. And 


then further, could the -- could the Board, 


realizing that you guys are -- are just dealing 


with NIOSH and not DOE or DOL, could the Board 


send a letter to the three agencies -- NIOSH, 


DOE and DOL -- and ask them what their practice 


is or how they evaluate worker testimony when 


there are no documents of any kind that 


disprove what they say? 


So two questions, one about the Board and one 


about can we inquire to these agencies. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Well, first of all, on the 


particular issue that we're talking about which 


is the designation of the facility, this Board 

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in fact does not get involved in that directly. 


We have inserted ourselves into it in this 


letter to the -- to the Secretary. But in 


reality, it is outside of our purview. Both 


Energy and Labor have described in their 


letters how they weigh worker testimony and 


affidavits -- I believe it was in both; I know 


it was in Pete's and I think, Pat, you may have 


addressed it as well. But in any event, my 


understanding is -- and Energy and Labor will 


have to speak to this -- but in the case of 


this designation, the ball is in their court in 


terms of how they weigh the worker testimony 


vis-a-vis the other documents that are examined 


and so on. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Okay. 


 DR. ZIEMER: As far as worker testimony for 


this Board in terms of say dose reconstruction, 


we don't have a cut and dried rule that says 


worker testimony counts a certain percentage. 


I think Board members weigh -- weigh this in a 


sense individually. We -- I think we -- we try 


to take worker testimony seriously and if -- if 


it gets ignored, we raise the issue with the 


agency and say basically -- for example, it's 

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one of the questions that has come up in some 


of our dose reconstruction audits if -- if we 


raise the question was the worker's testimony 


taken into consideration in the dose 


reconstruction. That question has been asked a 


number of times in the audits. So I think -- I 


think we try to do that. But this particular 


issue, I don't think the Board is directly 


involved. 


Others may add to that, but -- 


 MR. STEPHAN: But... 


 DR. ZIEMER: We -- we -- as I say, we have sort 


of inserted ourselves outside of our -- 


 MR. STEPHAN: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- charter, as it were, and it -- 


to -- to get involved in this and both DOE and 


Labor have been shall we say courteous enough 


to say even though it's not your business, we 


will respond to it. 


 MR. STEPHAN: I'm not sure that we have a 


response from DOL -- maybe Jeff can -- from 


DOL. Maybe Jeff can help us as to -- and maybe 


that's in this letter; it's a pretty long 


response --


 DR. ZIEMER: There was a letter from -- 

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 MR. STEPHAN: -- as to exactly how DOE (sic) 


weighs worker testimony. 


 DR. ZIEMER: It may have been a letter to Dan 


McKeel. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Right. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Because I know that Dan has asked 


that ques-- Dr. McKeel, are you here? Yeah, I 


-- I know that you have asked that question of 


both Labor and Energy, did you not, and -- 


 DR. MCKEEL: Yes, sir. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And you may have not been 


satisfied with their answer, but there was -- I 


know that Pete gave a response. I couldn't 


remember if Labor did or not -- or if Energy 


did or not. 


 DR. MCKEEL: Well, my -- my view of it is that 


that may be considered a partial answer, but 


what I'd proposed to Pat Worthington yesterday, 


and still propose, is what's needed is a very 


direct question such as Robert just posed, and 


a very direct answer. And that really has not 


been forthcoming. I would say the answer I got 


from Labor was convoluted, and it's a very 


simple question and I think Robert posed it 


quite well. And you know, Pat said yesterday 

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that maybe the DOE lawyers were going to have 


to address that and I said that would be great, 


let's put the question to them in -- a couple 


of sentences is all it would take, and let's 


get a similar kind of answer back in a couple 


of sentence from their lawyers, and then we can 


present it to the Board and show them. So I --


I think that's an important issue. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. 


 MR. STEPHAN: And Dr. Ziemer, I just want to 


draw -- draw a distinction. I mean we -- we 


respect the -- the role and the 


responsibilities of the Board and NIOSH and 


Labor and DOE. But there is a -- a much --


there's a big difference between asking these 


agencies if they have weighed worker testimony 


and asking them what weight they give worker 


testimony when there are no documents that -- 


that disprove what the workers have to say. So 


it's an important distinction. 


The position of the Senator is that it -- it 


would be preferred if the Board would adopt a 


guiding principle as to how you address this 


issue as a Board if you can reach consensus 


about how to do that. And then it goes to the 

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issue of what does -- you know, knowing that 


the Board does not have purview over DOL or 


DOE, regardless, how do -- how do you evaluate 


when deciding to vote on an SEC what their 


decision-making process was relative to worker 


testimony. So I guess that's a question. May­

- maybe you can answer it, maybe you can't. 


We're not trying to put you on the spot; we 


just don't know. Do we -- do you accept DOL -- 


Department of Labor and DOE at their -- at face 


value when they say that they have accepted 


worker testimony and you go with that, or do 


you not? Is it a case by case basis, and is 


there room to discuss that the Board would -- 


would take up this notion of trying to reach 


consensus about how we deal with worker 


testimony -- is -- ra-- rather than always 


going down the route of it's up to each 


individual Board member. And if we can't reach 


consensus, that's obviously how you would have 


to proceed, but -- but there may be consensus 


here about how you deal with -- with worker 


testimony when there's nothing to disprove what 


they say. 


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say we could reach such a consensus -- we may 


or may not be able to do that, but should we be 


able to, I'm not sure that would have any 


bearing on what either DOE or Labor actually 


does because we cannot impose our view of that 


on them. And -- and once -- once they make a 


determination of let's say an AWE, we may or 


may not agree with it, but I think -- and I'll 


ask others -- it's like many other things in 


this law. 


We -- we are mandated, in a sense, to proceed 


as designated in the law. For example, we're 


not in a position to say well, I don't care 


what Congress said about the 22 cancers; we're 


going to use a different number or a different 


list. So -- so we may disagree on a number of 


things, either technically or philosophically, 


but in a sense are bound by sort of the 


boundaries that are put around us. Sometimes ­

- sometimes to our dismay and sometimes to -- 


maybe we are in agreement with, but -- so I'm 


being a little evasive here 'cause I don't know 


fully how to answer your question. Other Board 


members may have some views on that, and Dr. 


Lockey can -- can articulate something here. 

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 DR. LOCKEY: In relationship to SEC petitions 


that the Board reviews, there are -- rightfully 


so, there are DOE worker representatives -- I 


mean workers on this Board to -- to help I 


think the Board as a whole understand the job 


tasks involved when working in the Department 


of Energy facilities. 


Second of all, I -- when we heard NIOSH review 


how they go through an SEC petition, they have 


outreach programs where they -- as I 


understand, workers come in and they interview 


workers and they take notes and they have 


affidavits to review and NIOSH reviews those 


with the Board as part of the review process. 


And so when we look at an SEC petition, there's 


opportunity to look at those -- the things that 


workers are saying. And when an issue is 


raised such as with Chapman Valve about the 


Deen Street facility, our -- we go back and say 


we need further clarification about that. 


I don't know if that helps or not. 


 MR. STEPHAN: No, it -- no, it's good to know. 


Thank you. It -- it sounds like what we need 


to do then is -- Jeff, maybe if you guys are 


willing, and Pat is -- to inquire to both DOE 

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and DOL as to -- with this specific question. 


And if you would -- would not mind, is 


providing a specific answer as to how worker 


testimony is weighed when there are no 


documents to disprove what they say. That --


that is the specific question. There's no 


other question. That's the specific question. 


And to have both agencies respond in turn, 


because you both have different roles and 


responsibilities, we respect that, but the -- 


the document -- the letter you reference from 


Mr. Turcic is not related to this question, and 


that question is not answered. This is a very 


important question for us related to Dow -- a 


very important question. Okay? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Thank you. 


 DR. WADE: Just to always be receptive as -- as 


a board, the other avenue is for you to ask the 


Secretary of Health and Human Services to 


expand the charter of this Board to allow it to 


function in ways that you would like to see it 


function. That's not the char-- that's not 


within the charter of the Board now, but you 


always have that prerogative. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Appreciate that. There -- there 

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is no dispute then that the Board must follow 


the decisions about site designations, et 


cetera, as they are made by DOL and DOE. You 


are not -- you do not have the authority to 


choose to ignore those designations. Is that 


correct? 


 DR. WADE: That is my interpretation of the 


Board's charter. 


 MR. STEPHAN: Okay. Okay. And I believe that 


Dr. McKeel has a couple more points on this 


point, or maybe another point, if -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Sure, you bet. 


 DR. MCKEEL: Oh, I'll -- I'll make it brief, 


but I do have a couple more things to say about 


this petition, and they do have to do with the 


Board. And this gets back to something you all 


are going to take up tomorrow, which is about 


the timeliness of transcripts. 


As I remember the discussion on May the 4th, 


and as I remember the discussion on July the 


19th, we all talked about whether the Board had 


the authority, without any further input from 


DOE or DOL, to cover the residual period under 


an SEC. And I made the statement that -- 


bolstered by some input some time ago by [Name 

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Redacted]-- that the law itself which we're 


talking about does not preclude doing that. 


And the discussion that I remember is when you 


were going to write to the Secretary of HHS, 


that letter was going to result in a legal 


opinion from HHS on whether in fact my opinion 


was -- could be upheld or not. In other words, 


what -- what -- if the law prevents covering a 


residual period in an SEC, what specific 


provision of it does that. And I think -- and 


I -- if that transcript would ever come 


forward, I think we could all read it. I think 


you said that there was a question in your mind 


about whether that was a valid -- that might be 


a valid point. You didn't say it was; you 


didn't say it wasn't. But you -- you certainly 


didn't say that you could rule that out. And I 


make it as an assertion that I -- it's a 


testable hypothesis, we would call it. And --


and the solution to the hypothesis really needs 


to be a -- a -- a definitive legal opinion from 


HHS. So I still think that's on the table. 


But I would also like to mention that for 


resolving this whole issue of extending the 


SEC, there are many other things that I'm still 

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waiting for and that we need. We all need to 


really evaluate this. When the -- SC&A, for 


instance, in between the July meeting and this 


meeting, has furnished an evaluation report of 


NIOSH's evaluation of the SEC. NIOSH has made 


an addition to their SEC evaluation. The Board 


has not considered ei-- any of -- either of 


those documents. 


 I'm still waiting -- four days after the NIOSH 


evaluation came out for the SEC, I wrote 14 


questions to Larry Elliott. He answered six of 


them and he made eight of them into FOIA 


requests. I'm still waiting for the final 


answers to those FOIA requests. I -- I got an 


interim response May 17th that had many 


documents that are up on the FUSRAP web site 


and were not useful to me. But the specific 


things I asked about about that evaluation 


report that are down at CDC now in their -- in 


their FOIA office, I haven't gotten that 


report. 


Now I wrote to Dr. Wade about that and he said 


he had no jurisdiction over the CDC FOIA 


office. But as a petitioner for Dow, you know, 


I can't do my part for these men. I feel badly 

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about Homer Simmons. I feel badly about Bill 


Hoppe. I don't know what to tell them anymore. 


You know, I -- we've done a lot of things. 


We've expended ourselves. Now we need some 


answers and results. And so I would just 


mention there are a lot of outstanding issues 


and to the extent that the Board has 


jurisdiction -- and I think they do have 


jurisdiction over my central question -- you 


know, we will follow up with DOE and DOL, and I 


-- I believe, to put Robert's question even 


more in perspective, if DOE -- if DOL would 


accept worker affidavits in the absence of 


contravening documents, then they would have to 


conclude that DOW did send thorium-magnesium 


alloys in large quantities to at least Rocky 


Flats. And you know, the workers have also 


testified they went to two other AEC 


installations. 


 And another issue that I've got to take up with 


them, they've imposed an additional burden on 


us. They say well, if you sent thorium alloys 


to Rocky Flats, even if that was acknowledged, 


you would have to prove -- I would have to 


prove, Robert -- our group would have to prove 

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I 

that that thorium alloy was used in nuclear 


weapons production. And the answer that I've 


given back is well, I think we can do that. 


think we can make a common sense argument that 


uses that. Even -- we haven't found any 


documents from Rocky Flats that would support 


what that was used for, or even that it was 


received. 


But my point is -- and I use the analogy of the 


research I did at Washington University. I had 


NIH grants that had direct costs that were -- 


that paid for the research, they paid for the 


test tubes, they paid for the microscopes and 


all that kind of stuff. We also had indirect 


costs, and those indirect costs, which were 70 


percent of the direct costs, went to maintain 


the building, to have secretaries, to have 


heat, all that kind of stuff. Well, did that ­

- did that money contribute to my research? It 


was essential for my research, and that's why I 


say that if thorium alloy was sent to Rocky 


Flats, it had to be used in some way to support 


-- if it didn't go directly into a nuclear 


weapon per se, it certainly went to support 


nuclear weapons and went into nuclear weapons 

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production because that's all Rocky Flats did. 


That's all the Mallinckrodt uranium division 


did. There weren't any other functions of 


those institutions. 


And so I say logically using, you know, normal, 


intellectual, intelligent reasoning, that 


argument should prevail. And I -- I think 


we're due at this point a similar reasoned, 


intelligent argument back from DOE and DOL why 


I'm wrong, and -- and we haven't gotten it yet. 


So our job, as I see it, is to pursue that 


vigorously in a straightforward way and expect 


a prompt and equally rigorous answer back and 


then we can come to that. 


But I -- the -- the thing I would ask the Board 


is to please consider asking HHS for a similar 


direct answer, can the Board approve an SEC to 


cover the residual period of contamination, yes 


or no? And I think that's a straightforward 


question and I -- I -- I honestly don't think 


it should take more than a couple of weeks to 


get the answer. So I'm actually begging you to 


please think about doing that before we get 


together in January. And please at that point, 


one way or the other, let me give Homer and 

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Bill a final answer. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Dan. Larry's 


got some comments on this and it has to do with 


the rule. 


 MR. ELLIOTT: Well, yeah, I want to make it 


clear, there's some con-- there's a lot of 


confusion around what's happened here with Dow. 


 The NIOSH SEC evaluation report that you took a 


vote on and -- and the Secretary has designated 


a class on dealt with our inability to 


reconstruct thorium exposures during the 


covered period. Thorium was not an AEC 


activity, according to the designation of the 


facility by the Department of Energy, during 


their operations for the AEC. So in the 


residual period we did not come forward with a 


recommendation to add that time frame into the 


class for -- for this facility because thorium 


was not covered under the residual period. It 


was not a covered activity under the residual 


period. It was covered under the covered 


period and so we included that in our 


evaluation and concluded that we could not 


reconstruct it. So I just want to be clear on 


that. 

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If we had come forward with an SEC evaluation 


report that said during the residual period 


there's a component of dose that we cannot 


reconstruct, we would have done so and I'm sure 


that the Board, in its wisdom, would have 


accepted that and moved for the designation of 


such a class. 


Yes, Dr. McKeel, the Board can pass a SEC class 


in a residual period. However, the 


constraining point here is that thorium 


activities at this facility were not considered 


AEC-related, so the residual period is not 


covered in that regard. 


I just want to be clear about that. Within its 


purview, NIOSH has done everything it possibly 


can do, unless the facility designation for DOW 


is changed in some regard. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Robert. 


 MR. STEPHAN: And not to belabor this point 


beyond what we already have, but La-- Larry is 


exactly right. But the -- our quibble here is 


not with the decision that NIOSH has made. We 


respect the roles and responsibilities here. 


But when we're talking about what -- what you 


just said, that this thorium beyond the covered 

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period is not related to AEC work, that -- that 


is what we are disputing because no one has 


given us any information to tell us that that 


is actually true. What -- we -- we don't have 


any. I have another -- I don't know, guys, how 


many pages of documents did you send from DOE, 


a couple of hundred maybe on our latest 


request? Yeah, about 500. We have 600-someodd from Dow, but none of them actually -- from 


-- from DOE or from DOL can show us that they 


have information which says that what the 


workers say is not true and what -- you know, 


what Larry just alluded to is in fact -- fact 


true. It's being accepted as fact, but no one 


can give us any information to show us that it 


is fact. So unless DOE or DOL can come to us 


with some other principle, we have no choice 


but to think -- to use an analogy here -- if 


this were a courtroom, that they're not 


actually going by -- that an eyewitness account 


is a pretty valuable account, as it would be in 


a courtroom. The -- the burden of proof in DOL 


or DOE related to worker testimony is above and 


beyond a preponderance of the evidence. 
I 


don't -- I don't know what -- principle agree ­
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- it -- it really is, other than a principle 


that is totally counter to what the SEC is 


supposed to do, which is supposed to help when 


there are no documents. And what DOE and DOL 


are saying is if you don't have documents to 


prove what the workers say is true, then it's 


not true. So this is -- this is -- this is a 


big -- a big issue. So I'm just trying to make 


the point that you have no reason to believe 


about this thorium beyond the covered period, 


that it's not related to AEC work, until 


someone gives us information that shows that 


it's not. Okay? Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And we understand that and we've 


heard the argument before, and I think Larry is 


pointing out that it's not an -- NIOSH doesn't 


have the purview to make that designation, that 


the thorium was or was not part of the -- the 


weapons program. They have been given the AWE 


designation as it was. And unless that gets 


changed through DOE and -- and Labor, that's 


the parameters he's working under. 


Dan, you have an additional comment on that? 


Yeah. 


 DR. MCKEEL: I promise this is two quick -- Dr. 

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-- I'm sorry, but --


 DR. ZIEMER: That's all right. 


 DR. MCKEEL: Yeah, but just the final 


conclusion is -- but NIOSH does have the wors-- 


worker testimony to consider about -- that -- 


that we contend that Dow Madison -- that some 


of the thorium activities were AEC-related. 


That's one point. 


 And the second point is that the other agency 


involved in all this, the one who originally 


said that none of the thorium activities were 


AEC-related, was the U.S. Army Corps of 


Engineers who remediated the site. And as I've 


told this Board repeatedly, you know, we went 


and met with the Army Corps of Engineers in -- 


in June of 2005 and directly asked Mark 


Bunche*, who's the assistant counsel, for 


exactly what Robert was talking about: what is 


your proof? You made this statement in your 


FUSRAP report of 2000. What -- what was the 


basis for it? What document do you have that 


can show that? And they were unable to do that 


and -- and I -- I have invited the Board, DOE, 


DOL -- I -- I took your suggestion. You said 


Dan, you've got to do some work after May 4th, 

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and I've done that. And I've invited them -- I 


gave both agencies Mark Bunche's address, his 


telephone number. They can do what we did, 


call him up and -- and see if he can produce 


those documents. So I -- I agree, we've talked 


about it enough. I think we'll do our part and 


I hope we'll come back with some good news for 


you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. Any other comments? 


That sort of brings us up to date, as it were, 


on Dow. But here, another comment, okay. 


 MS. CANO: Again, it's --


 DR. ZIEMER: DOE. 


 MS. CANO: It's -- it's Regina Cano from DOE. 


Mr. McKeel, I believe with the Army Corps of 


Engineers, we did contact the program manager 


for that evaluation, and I believe on Monday or 


Tuesday she did send a letter to Dr. McKeel and 


also cc'd us that she went back and looked 


through her records and could not figure out 


why she stated that in the public meeting, that 


she misspoke. That was a mis-- a misstatement 


on her behalf at that meeting, but -- so... 


 DR. MCKEEL: Gina's getting something else 


confused. Sharon Cotner*, who was -- is the 

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program manager for FUSRAP activities in the 


St. Louis district, made a comment in a 


February 2000 meeting that uranium processing 


at Dow Madison took place from 1957 to '62, so 


we followed up with her and said we've never 


heard that before. Nobody's ever heard that 


uranium processing took place in '61 and '62. 


But if that's true, of course, it would make a 


difference in the covered period. And she 


promptly went back and looked in her records, 


said they looked and looked and looked and she 


can find no other evidence other than they 


processed uranium up through '60, just like the 


SEC class has it, and that -- in her response 


back she said I was mistaken. That had nothing 


to do with the thorium activity at all. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, thank you. Who did -- Jim, 


did you have a comment? 


 DR. MELIUS: Yeah, I would just like to thank 


DOE for coming here to the meeting today and 


presenting -- I know we've been maybe giving 


you a little bit of a hard time, but appreciate 


their efforts and I think it's -- it's useful 


and would hope that -- could continue to 


interact and -- in a positive way to -- to 

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settle some of these issues. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you. We do appreciate it, 


Pat, and I've mentioned to Pat to convey also 


to Glenn Podonsky our thanks as well. 


Okay. 


BETHLEHEM STEEL


 DR. WADE: One last -- Bethlehem --


 DR. ZIEMER: Bethlehem Steel, we have a letter 


from Senator Schermer -- Schumer's office, I 


think. Is that going to be read into the 


record? 


 DR. WADE: Yes. Introduce yourself, please, 


Richard. 

 MR. WESTON: I will. 

 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. 

 MR. WESTON: My name is Richard Weston, W-e-st-o-n. I'm employed by the Centers for Disease 


Control and Prevention. I work in the 


Washington, D.C. office of the Director as a 


public health advisor. My colleague, Jason 


Broehm, usually attends these meetings. He 


couldn't. I'm here in his -- his place. 


Senators -- Senator Charles Schumer of New York 


has a one-page statement that his office has 


asked to be presented to the -- to the meeting, 

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and I would like to read that. It's a one-


page, double-spaced statement so it might take 


me three or four minutes to read that. 


(Reading) Thank you for the opportunity to 


address this Board on the petition of the 


Bethlehem Steel Plant in Lackawanna, New York. 


I appreciate this chance to share my views with 


you, and I'm going to take this moment to again 


urge you to add a class to the Special Exposure 


Cohort for these former nuclear workers. 


At its last meeting the Board decided to delay 


any decision on Bethlehem's petition until the 


working group makes its recommendation 


regarding the appropriate limitations on the 


use of surrogate data and site profiles. 


Though I'm disappointed by the delay, I remain 


optimistic that the working group's efforts 


will bring clarity to a process that until now 


has felt arbitrary and at times capricious. 


I firmly believe that a policy that establishes 


limitations on surrogate data, rather than the 


current ad hoc decision-making process, will 


lead to a favorable decision on Bethlehem's 


petition. Any reasonable limits on the use of 


surrogate data would fall well below the 

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excessive level at which it is employed in 


Bethlehem Steel's profile. 


While I do not dispute the usefulness of 


surrogate data in limited circumstances, overreliance on it, as in the case of Bethlehem 


Steel, is unacceptable. As I and many others 


have expressed repeatedly, the inordinately 


heavy reliance on surrogate data in Bethlehem's 


site profile renders the profile unusable. It 


is not a reliable representation of the plant's 


real conditions. Under the circumstances, the 


Board should void the site profile, release the 


CDC from its futile attempts at dose 


reconstruction, and declare the employees of 


Lackawanna Bethlehem Steel a new class of the 


Special Exposure Cohort. 


The Energy Employee Occupational Illness 


Compensation Program was established to repay 


in some small measure the America's -- 


America's debt to these former Energy workers. 


Their work was critical to building the nuclear 


arsenal that brought the Soviet Union to its 


knees, keeping the Cold War from erupting into 


a hot war which could have killed thousands 


upon thousands of people. 

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 But tragically, though their hard work saved 


our nation from violence, America still has 


wounded veterans of the Cold War. These 


sickened Energy workers have borne the weight 


of injury that they spared the rest of the 


nation. They are fallen heroes of the Cold War 


and deserve to be treated with the dignity and 


veneration that a great nation always affords 


its wounded warriors. It is the least that we 


can do to fully compensate them for their 


terrible illnesses, which they have contracted 


through service to their country. 


Finally, many of the men and women who are 


awaiting compensation from this program are 


aging and unwell. Time is, unfortunately, of 


the essence now. For these workers, justice 


delayed will be justice denied. Please move 


with all due haste to establish compensa-- to 


establish and compen-- excuse me. Plea--


please move with all due haste to establish 


compensation for our fallen heroes. 


And that's the statement of Senator Charles 


Schumer. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. And the 


Senator of course in his letter did focus on 

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the issue of surrogate data, and as you know, 


we do have a workgroup that is addressing the 


surrogate data issue. And Jim Melius, perhaps 


you can give us a brief report because that 


impacts essentially on -- ultimately on the 


Bethlehem Steel issue. 


 DR. MELIUS: I was just helping my colleague 


find one of our documents. We actually -- it ­

- it's a brief update. We've had a -- SC&A do 


an inventory on the use of surrogate data among 


our site profile procedures, I believe it's SEC 


evaluations and so forth, and they had provided 


that to the workgroup about three weeks ago. 


And the workgroup will -- hopefully is having a 


brief meeting -- it's getting briefer as time 


goes by -- this afternoon immediately following 


this meeting to establish our -- our work plan 


for -- for going forward. But I'd like to 


certainly thank SC&A for doing the inventory 


'cause I think it provides a basis for us to be 


able to evaluate and -- in a fair fashion 


rather than selecting out arbitrarily -- we'd 


(unintelligible) better way of -- of 


approaching this. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much. So let me 

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ask, Board members, do you have any additional 


questions on Bethlehem Steel? We're obviously 


-- be awaiting the workgroup's recommendation 


relative to this particular case, as well as 


some others perhaps as well. Questions or 


comments? Requires no action today, it's 


basically an update on the status of that 


particular petition. 


 (No responses) 


If not, I think we are ready to recess until 


the public comment period. Do we have any 


housekeeping issues to take care -- 


 DR. WADE: No, we do -- we do have our science 


presentation that we will hear tomorrow. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Jim, you can't go home tonight yet 


then. Okay. 


 DR. WADE: You can't go home again, Jim. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, let's recess then until 


7:30, at which time we will have our public 


comment period. 


 (Whereupon, a recess was taken from 5:15 p.m. 


to 7:30 p.m.) 


PUBLIC COMMENT


 DR. ZIEMER: Good evening -- good evening, 


everyone. We're going to go ahead and begin 

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our public comment session this evening. I'm 


just going to go through the list in the order 


that we have it. 


I do want to remind the speakers that the Board 


has imposed a ten-minute time limit on the 


speakers. I like to remind people that that 


should be seen as an upper limit, not a time to 


be achieved. So -- but that's mainly so that ­

- as a courtesy to those that are later on the 


list have ample time to give their remarks as 


well. 


 So Marilyn Schneider, we have you first, if you 


want to begin, and then we'll take up from 


there. 


 MS. SCHNEIDER: Are you ready for me? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Go ahead. 


 MS. SCHNEIDER: My name is Marilyn Schneider. 


I worked as -- as a secretary at Mallinckrodt's 


Destrehan and Weldon Spring sites in '57 and 


'58 while they were refining radionuclides for 


the Cold War and was unknowingly exposed to 


radioactive material. I was not monitored for 


exposure and had no idea what was being 


produced. 


As an office worker my skin was exposed to 

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airborne radionuclides and I inhaled 


contaminated air through the ventilation system 


and from the open window next to my desk, and 


drank the contaminated water. My desk and any 


paperwork I handled were exposed to radioactive 


chemicals in the air. I was also a mouth 


breather because I had a deviated septum at 


that time. 


 Plant workers with and without uniforms ate in 


the same cafeteria with the office workers and 


visited the offices. Tables in the cafeteria 


were often coated with yellow dust. 


Deformed frogs from ponds on the Weldon Spring 


site, some with two or three heads and extra or 


missing limbs due to probable carcinogens in 


the pond, were brought into the office by plant 


workers. Other office workers at Weldon Spring 


also developed cancers. When the radioactive 


waste was buried, the cleanup crew developed 


skin cancers. 


I was in a carpool with plant workers and drove 


the family car every third day. My car and 


other cars in the carpool were parked five days 


a week in the plant parking lot. These 


vehicles were contaminated in and out with dust 

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from the smokestacks. The plant workers did 


not wear uniforms and rode to and from work in 


their street clothes. I rode in these 


contaminated cars, and was also exposed to dust 


from the workers clothing. In addition, my 


family was also exposed from use of the family 


car. 


In 1975, 17 years after exposure to radiation, 


I developed colon cancer with penetration of 


the cirrhosa* and metasis (sic) to two of eight 


nodes. The first surgery removed eight inches 


of colon. I wore a colostomy bag until my 


second surgery resected the bowel. I was given 


a 30 percent chance of surviving one year. 


Despite severe nausea, vomiting, mouth sores 


and hair loss from two years of high-dose chemo 


in the veins, followed by two years oral chemo, 


I did survive. Because my veins blow up due to 


the two years of chemo in my veins, I now have 


a port inserted to take the chemo. 


In 1977 I developed episodic loss of 


consciousness of undetermined origin, which 


still continues. After many tests, the causes 


cannot be determined and I'm taking medication 


for seizures. 

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1998 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and 


take thyroid medication. Hypothyroidism can be 


caused by radiation exposure. 


In July of 2000 I had a pulmonary test which 


indicates my inspiratory loop is slowed, 


suggestive of variable intrathoracic 


obstruction. On the tests I could inhale but 


could not completely exhale. 


I was cancer free until diagnosed with breast 


cancer in 2000, 42 years after exposure. I was 


treated with a lumpectomy, sentinel node biopsy 


and radiation. 


Then in 2001, after pain in my right calf, I 


was diagnosed with a very rare cancer of the 


smooth muscle cells called leiomyosarcoma. 


Soft tissue sarcomas are wildly growing cells 


from the soft tissue part of the body and 


include fat, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, 


skin and cartilage. Lab results didn't show a 


clear margin after the first two surgeries. 


The third surgeon said he would take off my leg 


if he didn't get a clear margin. My surgical 


chart said it was my left leg. I was very 


concerned and wanted this error corrected, so 


the anathesiologist (sic) marked my left leg 

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"no" and my right leg "yes," and the third 


surgery removed five inches of fibula, which 


controls foot movement. The bone was removed 


from my knee to mid-calf. The bone was not 


replaced. I was told I would be able to walk, 


but may have foot drop. Twice a day for one 


week after surgery I received internal 


radiation through plastic tubes inserted into 


the surgical site -- they called it 


brachytherapy -- then external radiation for 


another 35 days. 


Two months after surgery I had excruciating 


pain in the surgical area and wanted to die. 


Even morphine was not effective. I could not 


walk. I could not be carried. I could not be 


touched. Every test possible was run at the 


Barnes-Jewish Siteman Cancer Center and there 


was no diagnosis other than probable nerve 


damage. 


 Upon research I found that -- I'm calling this 


LMS for short, the leiomyosarcoma -- is a very 


rare cancer in the U.S., but a major cancer in 


Japan because of exposure to radiation from the 


atomic bomb. LMS is very unpredictable. It 


can be quiet for a long time, then erupt after 

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20 years. It's a resistant cancer, not 


responsive to chemo or radiation. This disease 


progresses from stage one to stage four. I had 


stage three. I will be monitored by 


specialists for the remainder of my life. My 


specialist, [Name Redacted], now tells me if I 


break this leg they will have to amputate 


because the only bone in my leg may not heal. 


A schoolmate who lived within five miles of the 


Weldon Spring site also developed LMS in a 


kidney. She did not work at the Weldon Spring 


plant. 


 The three cancers I've had at this point are 


totally unrelated. In December 2001 [Name 


Redacted], a genetic counselor in St. Louis, 


Missouri, stated that none of my cancers were 


family related. Her report states most 


carcinomas arise from somatic mutations that 


are acquired after birth, such as exposure to 


carcinogenic agents. 


In 2004 I developed a fist-sized benign tumor 


on my uterus. The doctor was going to biopsy 


until he was told about my leiomyosarcoma. He 


immediately reacted and said it would require a 


laparotomy -- I guess I'm saying all these 

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words right -- adheliosis, total abdominal 


hysterectomy and bilateral salpingoophorectomy. 


I fully expected this to be another cancer. 


In March 2006 [Name Redacted], a cancer 


specialist at Barnes Jewish in St. Pete-- St. 


Louis, sent a letter to the Department of Labor 


stating that my cancers were likely 


environmentally caused, and there is certainly 


a known association between exposure to 


environmental carcinogens and radioactive 


material and the development of cancer. He 


also stated soft tissue sarcomas are relatively 


uncommon cancers and there are only 8,000 known 


cases in the United States. According to [Name 


Redacted], director of statistics at the 


Radiation Effects Research Foundation 


headquartered in Hiroshima, cancer risk from 


radiation exposure continues throughout life. 


In May 2007 when my skin and eyes turned yellow 


as a banana, I was immediately admitted to the 


hospital and a stint was placed in my bile 


duct. I was diagnosed with another rare 


cancer, adenocarcinoma of the bile duct. Ten 


days later when my bilirubin had decreased from 


20 to eight -- this is the yellowness -- I 

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underwent Whipple surgery. The surgeon removed 


my gallbladder, half of my pancreas, part of my 


stomach and the entire duodenum. 


 Recovery from this cancer was pretty rough. 


Food couldn't enter the stomach because of the 


surgery. My oncologist and radiologist tell me 


there are no statistics on how to treat this 


cancer. As previously stated, I had the port 


inserted for the chemo because my veins have 


collapsed from previous chemo in 1975. This 


port now enters the carotid artery. It takes a 


highly skilled phlebotomist to even draw blood. 


IVs now have to be put in my neck. 


I had just started chemo and was recovering 


from surgery when I noticed a small black mole 


with tendrils on the calf of my right leg. My 


doctor remarked, looks like trouble, and sent 


me to a dermatologist for a scraping and lab 


work. The diagnosis was junctional melanocytic 


proliferation. He consulted with my 


oncologist, and my chemo was put on hold until 


this precancerous melanoma could be excised. 


was taking chemo, dealing with a confirmed 


cancer of the bile duct and another possible 


cancer, melanoma, at the same time. 


I 
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 Then I receive another denial from HHS stating 


I wasn't exposed to enough carcinogens to 


warrant four, possibly five, unrelated cancers. 


I've been denied compensation seven times, more 


times than Judas denied Christ. In the 


official report proceedings before the Final 


Adjudication Branch of the U.S. of Labor (sic) 


dated 12/14/06, Tom Daugherty, the hearing 


representative, states that NIOSH and 


Department of Labor found a 34.63 percent 


combined probability that my colon and breast 


and leiomy-- leiomyo was casually related to 


impairment under the Act. This was prior to 


the adenocarcinoma of the bile duct. I was 


scheduled for a closing interview on September 


13th, 2007 for denial number six. When the 


interviewer called I told him I had submitted a 


claim for adenocarcinoma of the bile duct, 


which he didn't know about until he checked. 


Then in a letter dated the very next day, 


September the 14th, HHS denied my claim. This 


was denial number seven. How could dose res-- 


be -- reconstruction be done so quickly? In 


addition, this rare bile duct cancer was dosed 


as gall bladder. 

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My last two cancers are extremely rare. The 


leiomyosarcoma, about one in a million chance 


of getting this, but leiomyosarcoma is now 


being seen in several other sites. 


The last dose reconstruction states there is no 


existing model to calculate dose for soft 


tissue of the calf. How is the rarity of this, 


or my current cancer, being addressed. Or is 


it? 


NIOSH states external doses from stack releases 


or other radiation sources may have been 


unmonitored at this site, and there was no 


workplace data done on exposure to radioactive 


material. Department of letter -- Labor letter 


dated 8/16/07 reporting my bile duct cancer to 


NIOSH states due to my job description I was 


not exposed to radiation, that I did not handle 


radioactive materials, and that my job 


description and probably work -- probable work 


location would not involve exposure to airborne 


radionuclides higher than that reported 


environmental lever -- levels. 


Let me tell you about my possible exposure. 


did not handle radioactive material, but had 


chronic exposure from breathing the air at the 


I 
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plant and in my car, handling paperwork on my 


desk, eating in the cafeteria with the plant 


workers, exposure to the paperwork brought into 


the office by plant workers. The denial did 


not take into account my breathing airborne 


radionuclides from the open window by my desk 


and breathing air from the ventilation system. 


I never wore a dosimeter badge; therefore there 


is no record of my internal or external 


exposure to airborne radionuclide 


concentrations. 


I have never smoked and I do not drink. Again, 


all my cancers are unrelated to heredity. The 


common tie is the carcinogens I was exposed to. 


Lastly, a coworker at the same sites with two 


of the same cancers, colon and breast, was 


approved. I had chronic exposure to 


carcinogens without informed consent. I was a 


human radiation experiment. My medical bills 


and emotional trauma have been astronomical. 


If I survive this cancer, I will probably get 


another. 


During one closeout with HHS I was told to be 


sure to let us know if you get another cancer. 


If this cancer doesn't kill me, you can be sure 

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I'll call when I get another one, even though I 


was told I wasn't exposed. 


I physically and emotionally cannot keep up the 


fight for compensation. I'm about ready to 


throw in the towel. How many cancers must I 


get in order to meet the 50 percent probability 


of causation? 


And I thank you for your attention. 


 DR. ZIEMER: And thank you, Marilyn, for 


sharing that with the Board. 


Next we'll hear from Susan Pru* -- did I 


pronounce that correctly? Yeah. 


 MS. PRU: Thank you. That's tough after 


hearing that. 


My name is Susan Pru. I'm the [Identifying 


information Redacted] of [Name Redacted]*. My 


[Identifying information Redacted] is now 


deceased -- I'm so upset by hers, I'm sorry. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Could you get a little closer to 


the mike? Thank you. 


 MS. PRU: My [Identifying information Redacted] 


worked at the Y-12 plant. The Department of 


Energy and Labor confirmed her employment 


during the covered time of [Identifying 


information Redacted]. Her diagnosis of breast 

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cancer, one of the 22 covered cancers, was 


submitted with her claim. We haven't yet 


received her medical records for the surgical 


remover -- removal, excuse me -- of the 


cancerous growth on her tongue, and we're still 


awaiting her de-- detailed earnings report. 


We know that [Name Redacted] was a [Identifying 


information Redacted]. My husband and sisterin-law know that she was in the plant. And 


according to DOE and the CDC, it wasn't until 


January of 1951 that all employees were 


required to wear a badge, regardless of where 


they worked. [Name Redacted] left employment 


[Identifying information Redacted] years prior 


to this. 


My question for the Board is, why was the claim 


recently sent to NIOSH for dosage 


reconstruction when she fit the very criteria 


for the SEC? She had one of the 22 cancers and 


worked over the 250 days, and we know that she 


was in the plant. So I would just love for 


someone to find out why. Thank you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Thank you very much, and perhaps 


one of the NIOSH staffers can help you track 


that down. 

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 DR. WADE: Department of Labor is here. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Or -- or Labor, okay. Thank you. 


And we'll get you connected with somebody here. 


Dan McKeel -- Dr. McKeel? 


 DR. MCKEEL: (Off microphone) (Unintelligible) 

 DR. ZIEMER: I'll give it to Ray, yeah. 

Thanks. 

 DR. MCKEEL: Good evening. These comments 

tonight are about GSI. No more Dow, I promise. 


I -- I'd like to complement in these remarks 


what John Ramspott had to say about GSI and the 


appendix BB for that site last night. 


Our group, SINuW, believes this document, 


appendix BB, is technically highly flawed. And 


we are happy that SC&A has been tasked to 


review it and thank the Board for that. 


John did not mention two reasons we believe 


appendix BB needs to be changed. These facts 


were both mentioned in my critique to that 


document now posted in redacted form on the 


OCAS web site. Neither of these facts is 


mentioned in appendix BB, nor was the second 


Betatron, both cobalt-60 and iridium-192 gamma 


sources, nor the 250 kVp portable X-ray unit 


that all contributed to worker dose at GSI. 

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First is the fact known since at least 1950 


that 20 to 25 MeV Betatrons used for both 


industrial non-destructive testing and medical 


treatment emitted neutrons as well as photons. 


Attached to my remarks is a neutron curve from 


one of the three medical Allis Chalmers 


Betatrons in the St. Louis area, and this data 


is from 1973, a very similar unit to that used 


-- to the two used at GSI. This is important 


data because GSI worker badges did not record 


neutron data and the relative biologic 


effectiveness of neutrons is ten-fold that of 


gamma photons. 


Second is the fact that individual film badge 


dosimetry data is available at Landauer for 30 


GSI Betatron and isotope workers. The years 


covered are 1963 to mid-1973 when the plant 


ceased Betatron operations. I informed OCAS 


about this dosimetry data months ago. One 


worker had a cumulative dose for one year of 


38,000 millirems, indicating significant over-- 


overexposure occurred at the site. 


Many GSI workers who have recently undergone 


dose reconstruction by NIOSH are aware of and 


are concerned about these serious technical 

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deficiencies in appendix BB. One of those 


workers has asked me to read into the record 


tonight the letter he wrote to Larry Elliott as 


a result of his exit interview. This letter 


bears out the report that SC&A just released on 


the same topic, the exit interview before 


signing OCAS, that NIOSH doesn't pay enough 


attention to worker input at this end of the 


process. 


 [Name Redacted], gave me explicit permission to 


state his name and disclose his NIOSH tracking 


number, and [Name Redacted] writes as follows 


to Larry J. Elliott. I want to read into the 


record this statement. (Reading) I believe 


that it has been preordained that my claim is 


to be denied, based on these facts. One, my 


Social Security record of employment for the 


years 1951 through 1961 was changed. I worked 


at General Steel Industries, which my Social 


Security record showed at the time of 


retirement in 1996, and was changed to roll 


capital CO prior to or after my claim was 


filed. 


 Number two, the name of the site was changed 


from General Steel Industries to Granite City 

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Steel. My claim was denied because I did not 


work at Granite City Steel during the years 


that uranium was being X-rayed at General 


Steel. Congressman Jerry Costello aided in 


getting this corrected. 


I have -- three, I have not been given any 


factors being considered for the dose 


reconstruction, such as (a) my work station and 


task performed, (b) the amount of dust in the 


air that could be radiated (sic) by the 


sunshine effect, or (c) the amount of residual 


radiation in the area. And in parentheses, a 


cleanup of the site of the old Betatron was 


completed in 1993 because of radiation 


contamination and the local city authorities 


were not notified, end of parentheses. 


 Number four, General Steel Industries' own 


railroad cars that were used throughout to 


transport the uranium castings, and they were 


also used throughout the plant. No one 


measured to see if they were contaminated. I 


don't know if that was considered. 


 Number five, NIOSH letter dated June the 27th, 


2007, signed by April Jenkins, said that Joe 


Dickey was to do my dose reconstruction and I 

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had to let her know if I had any reason to want 


someone else. I called on July the 6th at 


12:48 p.m. central time and said that I wanted 


a hold on the dose reconstruction to have an 


expert review the qualifications of Mr. Dickey. 


She said, quote, okay, end quote, and I was to 


call her when I wanted it to proceed. On July 


the 9th, 2007 I called and talked to Nancy 


Vander Ahe, A-h-e, and she said my case was put 


on pending status, in quotes, but would not 


sent me a letter to confirm. On August the 


2nd, 2007 I received a NIOSH letter stating 


that my case was in dose reconstruction. The 


letter was simply dated July 2007. I called at 


1:30 p.m CT and asked to talk to Nancy or 


April, and was told they were not available. 


then asked who made the decision and was told 


a, quote, decider, end quote. I asked who, and 


they said a leader named Richard McCarthy. I 


asked to talk to him and was told he would call 


me back. He didn't call. On August the 3rd I 


called and was told Mr. McCarthy was not in on 


Fridays. On August the 6th Mr. McCarthy called 


and told me my dose reconstruction would go 


forward and I couldn't stop it. 


I 
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I 

Six, I am now told I'm to sign a form saying I 


don't have any other information to submit. 


don't know what information they have, or how 


they perceive that information. If I don't 


sign the form and submit it in the allotted 


time frame, they may, quote, administratively 


close my dose reconstruction, end quote. This 


sounds like a, quote, done deal, end quote, and 


there's nothing I can do. I can tell you I 


don't like it, and I will share this 


information with Senators Durbin and Obama, as 


well as Congressman Costello. 


 And his final paragraph says (reading) My work 


station was out in 10 building among all the 


castings and burners, the welders, the 


chippers, the grinders, the sandblast 


operators, the inspectors, the four foremen and 


laborers. I was there every day and was 


exposed to everything they were. I went to 


check on castings at the Betatron site on many 


occasions. During lunch breaks in good 


weather, we would go out and sit on the company 


rail cars to eat our lunch. No one told any of 


us about radiation. Inside the building if 


someone was working inside of a casting -- and 

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in parentheses, tank (unintelligible) and 


turrets, end -- end parentheses -- it was 


necessary, due to the noise, to lean against 


the casting to get information from them. It 


was normal practice to lean on the castings 


while writing information on the cards. 


Respectively (sic), [Name Redacted], NIOSH 


tracking number [Identifying Information 


Redacted]. 


Thank you very much. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much, Dr. 


McKeel. 


Next Deb Detmers, and Deb we heard from earlier 


and -- is she back this evening? She's with 


the Congressman's office. 


 DR. MCKEEL: (Off microphone) I think they may 


have (unintelligible). 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah. We did hear from her 


earlier today. 


Bev -- is it Marcoski*? 


MS. MARCOSKI: Yes. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yes. 


MS. MARCOSKI: I'm -- I'm Bev Marcoski and I 


just have a few comets -- comments on the SEC 


petition with Olin Chemicals. My comments 

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revolve around four areas. One is water 


testing at the plant, which was not done. Two 


is part of the chlorination process for the 


calcination process. Three, you talk about 


specific assumptions versus the general. And 


then four, I'd like to touch base on the 


thorium. 


I was doing some general reading in Aviation 


Medical and it referenced ww.epa.gov/radon 


(sic), and what is stated was drinking water 


deaths are primarily due to lung cancer due to 


the radon. And I started thinking about 


Blockson and all the information I've read over 


the past six years, and nothing was mentioned 


about water testing on the site. I'm assuming 


the men worked -- the workers in the plants and 


the ladies in the administrative offices drank 


the water. Also there's a possibility that 


some of the men also showered in this water, 


and there's no objective evidence of any water 


testing. 


When I was in Joliet a couple of weeks ago one 


of the gentlemen sitting next to me said that 


Olin did have six of their own wells. 


 Further to think through the process and in 

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your SEC petition, the most recent one from 


July, it talks about washing down the uranium 


area, and then what happened to that waste 


water? And also what happened to the waste 


that they swept up? That was something that 


was unanswered, how that left the plant or 


where it went. And again, I guess there's open 


questions on how polluted was the water. 


 Secondly, chlorination is known to have a 


carcinogenic effect as well, and I'm sure they 


used high levels of chlorin-- chlorine to 


increase this calcination process. I know 


you've only looked at radionucleides (sic), but 


I know chlorine does have a carcinogenic effect 


as well, especially when you're inhaling the 


fumes, and there's nothing said about that, and 


that's page 31 of the SEC. 


 Specific versus general, and I guess I did my 


own little analysis versus my father's job, and 


-- and they also did one on page 41 in the SEC 


for only one person, a filter operator. Most 


of the assumptions made for this job analysis 


were general, assuming that a person stood 30 


centimeters away from the contamination. In my 


case I assumed that my dad took some of the 

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waste away from this building and that he 


handled it for approximately 20 minutes two 


times a week. That millirem exposure is 160 at 


that, and when I did the math it came down to ­

- over a 10-year period -- 51,150 millirems of 


exposure versus the assumed 24,000. So even in 


his small job of taking the waste away from 


this area where they processed the uranium, 


specifically looking at it, his exposure was 


twice what was assumed. And they only did this 


for one other person, and I guess if you're 


going to analys-- analyze the jobs, you might 


have to look at the specific jobs each of these 


people did, which may be very encumbersome 


(sic) to do to get exact exposures versus 


general. 


 And then fourthly, to talk about the thorium, 


and I guess in the third Technical Basis 


Document, I believe page 13, there is an 


unknown value of what the matrix is exactly on 


it. And I don't know how you can go back to 


the '50s. It says in thorium-230 the matrix 


may not dissolve, assuming that it didn't go to 


the phosphoric acid stream, but maybe a larger 


portion could have gone to the sulfuric acid 

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gypsum pond; and if so, how would it change the 


technical assumptions. 


Those are the four things that I had. Thank 


you. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Bev, and the -- 


the Blockson working group has heard your 


remarks and can consider them further as they 


continue -- at least many of them. Certain 


ones, such as chlorine, actually are outside 


the purview of this group. We recognize there 


are many carcinogens in the workplace, and 


we're somewhat restricted in what we can 


address in terms of the legal framework that we 


work in, but that's -- that's one of the issues 


that is always a concern. But be aware of that 


at least also. 


Cyril -- looks like G-u-r-e, Gure? Close 


enough for government work, as they say -- 


right? 


 MR. GURA: Well, my name is Cyril Gura*. 


]Identifying Information Redacted] was [Name 


Redacted] and he is tracking number 


[Identifying Information Redacted], and [Name 


Redacted] is my [Identifying Information 


Redacted]. And had an opportunity to review 

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SEC 00058, and I believe it's more favorable 


and more in line with the intent of federal 


litigation, but reviewing it I did see some 


things that I didn't see answered. 


 In one particular case, personal protective 


equipment, looked -- personal protective 


equipment was issued to employees as comparison 


to what personal protective equipment employees 


would have to wear now when handling -- working 


around these noted hazardous materials 


identified at Blockson's. 


 And then secondly, on page 27 of 50, talk about 


urinalysis. It was sampled from April 1954 to 


February 1958. The petition class definition 


was from January 1st, 1951 to December 31st, 


1962. The sampling occurred over three years 


and ten months. However, if there was any 


records, there was no sampling indicated for 


seven years and one month. What would DOL do 


if their inspectors went out on site to review 


compliance records and a seven year one month 


period were missing now? Is this one of many 


latent conditions that is indicative of poor 


safety oversight, or is this something more 


blatant like hiding something or keeping unsafe 

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working conditions unknown? 


 And lastly, I understand in order to calculate 


exposure certain assumptions need to be made, 


and some of these newer assumptions like 


increasing the radon level from 50 percent to 


95 percent does help. And including other 


cancers -- lung, liver, kidney -- also helps. 


And some of the other exposures from thorillium 


(sic) and uranium are important. But it should 


be remembered that employees' health 


disabilities, like this woman over here, just ­

- dif-- different types of cancers, fatalities 


and also -- should be a heavily-weighed factor, 


even more so than calculations based on general 


assumptions, even though that these assumptions 


are the best that could be ascertained at the 


time. 


That's all I have. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much. 


I think we have on the phone Terrie Barrie from 


Colorado. Is Terrie Barrie on the line? 


Terrie Barrie is on the line. Terrie, you may 


give us your comments, please. 


 MS. BARRIE: Well, good evening, Dr. Ziemer and 


members of the Board. My name is Terrie Barrie 

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and I'm with the Alliance of Nuclear Worker 


Advocacy Groups. I'd like to thank you and Dr. 


Wade for allowing me to call in my comments 


tonight. 


I want to address the draft report that SC&A 


submitted on the closeout interviews. Their 


summary is very similar to what I hear from 


individual claimants. Claimants are asked 


during the initial interview to supply names, 


for example, of coworkers that could help 


verify an exposure or workplace condition. In 


the claims I have tried to help I have yet to 


hear of NIOSH contacting those workers -- those 


coworkers. It appears to the claimants that 


the initial interviews, as well as the closeout 


interviews, are for show only. The claimants 


do not feel that NIOSH ever intended to 


investigate and find the whole truth of how 


much radiation the workers were exposed to. 


[Name Redacted], an advocate for some Los 


Alamos claimants, contacted me this morning. 


She requested and I agreed that the Board 


should instruct SC&A to review a much larger 


sampling of randomly-chosen claims 


(unintelligible) exit interviews from each DOE 

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facility from across the country. This'll give 


the Board a more accurate assessment of the 


problem with the closeout interviews. 


 If the sampling results in a systemic problem, 


then each and every denied claim needs to be 


reopened to ensure that all evidence was 


considered in reconstructing doses. I shudder 


to think of the cost, but reopening claims will 


preserve the due process rights of the 


claimants. However, if this dose re-- if this 


does come to pass, I strongly recommend that 


the ORAU team not be permitted to perform the 


new dose reconstructions. They should not 


receive financial compensation when it was 


their failure to produce adequate procedures 


for dose reconstructions. 


There is one other issue I'd like to raise 


tonight. SC&A had concerns on NIOSH/ORAU's 


ability to apply their new procedures 


correctly. I had one Rocky Flats claimant 


contact me last week -- last week with a 


disturbing story. Her husband had died of 


lymphoma years ago. When the new procedure, 


target organs for lymphoma, was issued she 


petitioned and was granted a reopening of her 

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claim by DOL. DOL sent her claim back to NIOSH 


for another dose reconstruction. However, the 


new dose reconstruction applied the super S 


model instead of the lymphoma target organ 


procedure. 


Some of -- Board members may not realize that 


she cannot appeal to DOL that NIOSH used the 


wrong procedure to reconstruct dose. During 


the appeals process DOL will not consider the 


claimant's objections to NIOSH's procedures or 


calculations. 


The claimants have heard nothing but how 


claimant friendly this program is. Ignoring 


evidence is not claimant friendly. The 


inability to question NIOSH's procedures during 


a DOL hearing is not claimant friendly. I 


strongly recommend that the Board do everything 


in its power to rectify these injustices. 


Thank you again for allowing me to speak 


tonight. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you very much, 


Terrie. 


Let me ask if there are any other individuals 


on the line that did wish to address the 


assembly? 

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308

 Yes, we'll take -- please tell us who you are 


and then you can proceed. 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: Okay. This is Sandra 


Baldridge. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay, very good. Proceed. 


UNIDENTIFIED: (Off microphone) 


(Unintelligible) 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: I was listening to the 


discussions earlier today, and the issue came 


up in discussion about worker statements being 


taken and used as evidence, and concerns about 


whether -- you know, what were -- what 


statements would be listened to, how they would 


be considered and so forth. And I recalled 


reading in the rules and regulations on 42 CFR 


82, and this is the statement as it appears in 


the rules and regulations. It says it is well 


recognized from health, behavioral and social 


research that there are substantial limitations 


and variations in the ability of people to 


accurately call -- recall past events and that 


these limitations generally increase with the 


time elapsed since the past event. However, 


all other sources of information available to 


NIOSH in conducting dose reconstructions 

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potentially involve substantial limitations. 


To conduct dose reconstructions NIOSH will 


apply procedures available to it to mitigate 


these limitations to the extent possible to 


improve the recall of employees. 


 Now the statement, as I read it, shows that it 


is written into the rules and regulations a 


prejudice against statements and testimony 


taken from workers. I don't know how anyone 


else sees it. 


 Another issue I would like to address is the 


timeliness. In filing the petition for 


Fernald, much of the basis of that was the 


discovery that there had been thorium 


processing in plant six where my father worked 


for three and a half years. That had been 


omitted from the site profile and actually was 


without -- had been conducted without NIOSH's 


knowledge. They claimed that records had been 


destroyed. 


And again in the rules and regulations, after 


having presented this information in 


[Identifying Information Redacted] case and 


claim, I got no -- nowhere with it on his 


personal case. It says HHS has added 

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provisions under 82.27 of this rule to 


authorize NIOSH to review com-- to review 


completed dose reconstructions on its own 


initiative upon obtaining new information or 


changing scientific elements underlying dose 


reconstructions. HHS has targeted the added 


provision to circumstances in which new -- the 


use of new information or scientific element 


could increase the levels of radiation doses 


previously estimated since the purpose of these 


provisions is to provide new information to DOL 


on claims that were denied based on outdated 


information. 


When I have contacted NIOSH about this they 


have chosen to make their prerequisite the 


revision of the site profile. Now they said 


today that they didn't know when their site 


profile for Fernald would be revised. So they 


have chosen to increase the time for the 


consideration of [Identifying Information 


Redacted] claim based on the new information 


that they have -- that they received in the 


spring of 2006. And to this point [Identifying 


Information Redacted] case is closed and none 


of the information that has been presented has 

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ever been considered. 


My third point, at the Fernald working group 


meeting, Dr. Ziemer, you indicated that OTIB-2 


was being looked at for its appropriate use, 


but you didn't elaborate on that. My con-- my 


continuing concern is that its application to 


dose reconstructions for workers who don't meet 


the criteria for its application, specifically 


an initial hire date after 1969 as stated in 


the document, and a start date prior to 1970. 


I was wondering if you could give me a little 


more information about what is being done to 


look into the use of inappropriate technical 


basis information bulletins. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Thank you, Sandra. I -- I 


think what I will need to do is get back to you 


separately on that particular thing. I need to 


talk with -- with Mr. Clawson, the head of the 


workgroup, and then get some clarity on how 


that relates in this particular case. 


But let's see, do -- do we -- well, we'll do 


this off line. I think we -- we may have your 


phone number in the records already, but if 


not, we'll -- we'll track that down and try to 


get you a more specific answer. I -- I don't 

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know the answer to that as I sit here right at 


the moment. 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: You know, in [Identifying 


Information Redacted] case, he was an employee 


at National of Ohio in 1971 -- actually in 


1951, not 1971. So you know, I would like to 


know how it applies and -- 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, and as I said -- 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: -- so forth. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- I don't know on that specific 


case, but --


 MS. BALDRIDGE: I'll be expecting a response. 


 DR. ZIEMER: -- in general -- right, and in 


general if -- if the Board identi-- 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: Do you have any questions for 


me? 


 DR. ZIEMER: Right. Thank you. In general, if 


-- if the Board identifies what we think is 


inappropriate use of -- of any of the 


documents, that's raised and we -- we try to 


learn what NIOSH's perspective is on it and -- 


and we also have our contractor look at these 


and then we try to reach some kind of 


resolution. But on specific cases, I think our 


preference is not to try to resolve those in 

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the public forum since there are often privacy 


issues involved. But we will get back to you 


and try to be more specific in answering this 


question for you. 


 MS. BALDRIDGE: I was just -- you know, hadn't 


really understood what was going on and, you 


know, thought I would take this opportunity to 


ask. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Fine. We'll -- we'll follow up 


with you, Sandra, on this. Thank you. 


Is there anyone else on the line that wishes to 


address the group tonight? 


(Pause) 


We have another person on line? Yes, we do. 


Please have them proceed, identify themself 


(sic). 


MR. DUTKO: (Unintelligible) G. Dutko. I'm 


from Granite City, Illinois. I was a Betatron 


operator at GSI between 1963 and 1966. Sir, my 


question is -- and it's not malicious or 


aggravating -- any intent whatsoever. But sir, 


50 years ago we weren't exactly told the truth 


of the hazards of the Betatrons. I was one of 


the fellas that turned the key on and simply I 


don't know the damage or sickness caused by 

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holding back the -- the truth about these 


machines, but I don't understand -- going back 


to Robert Stephan's and Dr. McKeel's statements 


-- why aren't the statements of the working -- 


working people -- carry any weight with the 


Board or with NIOSH or DOE? Sir, we fired 


thousands and thousands of Roentgens back in 


that time. We fired thousands of Roentgens, 


sir. And I don't know of any firing sheet 


possessed by NIOSH of these logs of radiation 


or Roentgens. I -- I -- they might have film 


badges. We never did trust a film badge. We 


wore dosimeters quite a bit. They burned the 


dosimeter logs. We never saw them. We never 


saw reports on -- on any kind of blood tests or 


urine tests. How, sir, can accurate -- how can 


accurate dose recon-- dose reconstructions be 


done in this case? And my -- my remarks are 


not intended to be malicious. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Okay. Okay, thank you for that 


question. I might tell you that in fact both 


NIOSH and our contractors are looking at the 


Betatron issue to determine the extent to which 


the doses can be re-- reconstructed. I don't 


think we know the answer to that yet. It's 

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possible that they may say they can't be. It's 


possible that they may determine that they can 


-- can reconstruct. So certainly we've taken 


seriously the -- the issues as raised by John 


Ramspott and -- and by Dan McKeel. We are 


looking seriously at the Betatrons and we hope 


to come up with a -- an answer to the very 


question that you have asked. 


MR. DUTKO: One thing I -- I do know and the 


only thing I got out of that 50-year-old 


experience is a lot of us people that turned 


the keys on the machines don't know really what 


kind of life expectancy we're going to have, 


sir, after finding out 50 years later what we 


didn't want to hear. 


 DR. ZIEMER: Yeah, thank you, and I have to 


take that as a rhetorical question. I don't 


think any of us know that. 


 Our court reporter does need to get your name, 


we missed that, if you could repeat it, please. 


MR. DUTKO: My name is John G. Dutko, D- as in 


dog u-t-k-o. I was a Betatron operator, 24 and 


25-million-volt Betatron operator at GSI 


between November '63 and November '66. Thank 


you, sir. 

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 DR. ZIEMER: Yes, thank you very much. Anyone 


else on the line tonight that needs to speak to 


us? 


 (No responses) 


 Apparently not. Let me go back here to those 


assembled. Is there anyone who wishes to 


address the assembly that didn't have a chance 


to sign up and -- and put your name on the 


list? We'd be pleased to hear anyone else who 


wishes to address the group tonight. 


 (No responses) 


If not, I thank you all for being in attendance 


and sharing with us. I would remind you that 


the Board will be meeting again tomorrow. 


You're welcome to join us again at that time. 


We'll recess now until tomorrow morning at 


8:30. 


 (Whereupon, an adjournment was taken to Friday, 


October 5, 2007 at 8:30 a.m.) 

______________________________ 

317 

1 

2 CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER 


STATE OF GEORGIA 


COUNTY OF FULTON 


 I, Steven Ray Green, Certified Merit Court 


Reporter, do hereby certify that I reported the 


above and foregoing on the day of Oct. 4, 2007; 


and it is a true and accurate transcript of the 


testimony captioned herein. 


 I further certify that I am neither kin 


nor counsel to any of the parties herein, nor 


have any interest in the cause named herein. 


 WITNESS my hand and official seal this the 


7th day of November, 2007. 


STEVEN RAY GREEN, CCR 


CERTIFIED MERIT COURT REPORTER 


CERTIFICATE NUMBER: A-2102